A Blast from the Past

I grew up in a time of bell-bottom pants, the peasant blouse, and the super-short hot pants. Wedge heels and gaucho pants were all the rage for the ladies. Men tottered around in platform shoes while wearing double knit polyester leisure suits. Yes, I grew up in the groovy 70s.

Photo courtesy of memecrunch.com

If a person wanted to look really hip and cool, he/she would carry a boombox on his/her shoulder while he/she strutted down the street to the beat of music from artists like The Village People, The Bee Gees, or Donna Summer.

Little did I know that shopping for a cell phone would take me back to those formative years.  Over the course of the past six months or so, the battery life on my cell phone has continued a downward spiral headed toward self-destruction.

In addition, my phone had been cutting out in the middle of conversations or other tasks that I was trying to perform (like playing on social media).  I didn't have enough storage space left to update to the newest operating system, which also started to cause major issues running apps on the phone.

Cutting a redhead off mid-sentence or crashing and losing everything in the middle of writing a blog post is dangerous to both man and machine.  The likelihood of this machine being smashed to bits with a hammer or run over by my car was becoming a very real possibility.

Even though the problems with my cell phone were driving me to the brink of insanity, I dreaded the idea of changing phones.  Even worse than the change of phones is the idea of having to go shopping for new technology.  Shopping for a cell phone ranks just below scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush on my list of enjoyable activities.  

But, the situation with my phone had become dire, so with an open mind and a pocketful of chocolate, I hit the stores.  I did decide to take my daughter with me so she could explain the latest technology at my level..... which is somewhere between the IBM Selectric typewriter and pencil/paper.

I told the salesman I would like a phone I could read without having to wear glasses.  Before I had time to blink, the salesman held up a Samsung Galaxy Note.  I smiled at him and told him it was very easy to read and it looked pretty, but I was really looking for a cell phone, not a tablet computer.

He looked at me as though I were daft and explained it is a cell phone "and so much more".  I pondered, apparently out loud, whether it would even fit in my handbag or if I'd have to switch to using a piece of rolling luggage just to carry it around.  The salesman rolled his eyes at this crazy middle-aged, unhip woman who was obviously over exaggerating.

Just as the salesman put the metal slab of a phone up to his ear, my daughter started to get a little wiggle as the store's intercom music started playing "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer .  With that 70's inspired ghetto blaster of a phone pressed to the salesman's ear, the only thing missing in this scene was John Travolta dressed in a white double-knit polyester leisure suit striking a pose.  Whoop-whoop!

I tried but fell far short of containing my snort of laughter.  Smiling, he said "I'm guessing you prefer something a little smaller."

"Why yes, I do believe something smaller would be nice.", I said. "Something I don't have to wear hip-huggers and a halter top with would be marvelous.  I don't really want to be the next viral social media meme captioned 'Granny's got groove'....."

Written by Christie Bielss