Cell phone results in fighting words

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Scientists have just discovered concrete evidence that aging causes the part of the brain which is in control of various speech functions to shrink.

One of the functions of that part of the brain is due consideration of what words we are uttering at any given moment. In other words, as we get older, we're more inclined to say stuff that we wouldn't have said when we were younger.

All this, judging from personal experience with aging, seems to be true. For me, it is based in fact on a cell phone provider who, in return for me signing up for two more years, stuck me with a high priced, Einstein-complex cell phone, one apparently invented by persons who believed that the more times one has to push the buttons to get anything done, the smarter they were.

Therefore, upon finding that it took no less than 16 key strokes to save a picture, I took the phone back to them.

"I want a different phone." So I told them. It was less than one week later. The phone was in as new condition. So was the instruction manual, except for a bit of fried egg on the back cover, which the woman behind the counter suspiciously picked at, eyeing me like I was some sort of cell phone pervert.

"You can't have one," she told me, explaining that phones could only be exchanged if they either had less than 29 minutes on them, or had been in one's possession for less than two weeks.

"Twenty-nine minutes!" I exclaimed. "You mean if I had spoken on it for thirty minutes it's ruined?" Inwardly, I cringed. I was face to face with a petty functionary.

"Sorry. I don't make the policy." They never do, do they.

"Well, let me talk to someone who does make the policy, then." Which are fighting words to a petty functionary, and were the first sign that age had withered my higher speech functions.

"Sorry, the owner is out of town."

"Good. Then you can handle this, can't you!" Aw, poop. Way wrong thing to say, but then, the words were out before I could sugar coat them. Darn this shrinking speech portion of my brain.

"The policy cannot be changed."

I whipped out the contract, laid it on the counter before her, and said: "Either I get another phone, or I'm going somewhere else."

"But you just extended your contract. You can't." You gotta love petty functionaries. Everything is black and white with them.

"You see this contract?" I held it up and waved it at her like a matador waves his cape at a near-sighted bull.

She nodded.

"You know what this contract is good for?"

She nodded, then shook, her head.

"It's real good to have this contract when one goes to the bathroom, which is the only thing it's going to be good for if I don't have a phone with which to call anyone! In which case I’m going elsewhere!”

Ah, darn. There went that upper speech judgment thing again.

She added: "The boss doesn't really care. We had someone in here yesterday with the same problem, and she told him she didn't care whether they stayed with this provider or not."

One must assume then that the owner wouldn't care whether or not I stayed, either. Even with aging speech centers, it's hard to win against someone who doesn't care whether or not they lose. Such behavior may in itself be evidence of a shrinking brain function, the part that is labeled "capitalistic profit mongering," and which leads most of us to go after the dollars we need to pay the mortgage, rent, grocery bill, etc.

"Isn't there some phone I can have? I've already paid you a hundred bucks for one."

"You can take this one here." Well, it looked all right.

"How much would it normally be?" I never should have asked.

"Fifty dollars."

"Oh, then I can send in this rebate form and get my other fifty bucks back, right?" I was pointing to the rebate forms plastered all over the place, on the counter top, on the walls — "Get this phone for nothing!"

"No, you can't."

Aw, good grief. "Why not."

"Because you have to mail in the rebate on the same day you signed your contract."

"Really?"

"Really." She went back to playing with her cell phone. Still trying no doubt to figure out one like they stuck me with.

I took my withering higher speech functions and left.

The contract is in my bathroom, waiting for me.

Alan Linda writes from his home in New York Mills.