TESSIE GETS A NEW PHONE

what she did before she had a I-phone!

“Finally! My phone arrived! Look at all these things you can do! Wait, I have to charge the battery. Look at this, a GPS, and I can get the weather, and wait, I have to charge the battery there’s a to-do list and wait, I have to charge the battery, a BUILT IN CAMERA! Wait, I have to charge the battery.”

And so it went with Tessie my older sister (much older) as we sat across from each other in my mother’s room at the rehab center. Old Tessie my older sister (much older) hated her old phone, the keyboard was too cumbersome to type on and too much trouble hitting the little button when a phone call came in,

While Tessie my older sister (much older) was going on about her wonderful new phone and all the apps including your key chain, (those little thin pieces if plastic with the scan bars from CVS or Shop and Stop or whatever they call themselves) a funny thought came to mind. What would Mom do with one of these new I-phones?

Someone new she won't phone.

My mother is very religious: she got that way after having me. I could picture the desk top photo, a picture of the Virgin Mary, all dressed up in powder blue, eyes raised to heaven, to match Mom’s shutters outside her house. Then there is the question of color of the phone, something “bright and cheerful, not so morguey” as she says, maybe a floral pattern to match her wall trim in the kitchen, and definitely yellow.

Apps would be an issue, since after Knitting Weekly, Crocheting Monthly and Wooden Spoon Daily Magazines, maybe a cooking magazine: there isn’t a whole lot Mom would go for.

Contacts she would have would consist of only one phone number: her boy toy. Since I married, Mom will rarely call her other offspring or me except maybe Tessie my older sister (much older), for a ride. Her regular phone with the touch-tone does not make connections to my house for some strange reason, and like she says when I ask how come she never calls me: “Since when does the mother do the calling?”

I once asked my mother if she would use a computer if I gave her one and taught her how to use it said: “What would I do with that thing? I have a TV and I don’t even use the darn thing!” “But Ma”, I said, “You can shop from home! You wouldn’t even have to leave the house!” And her answer was to tell me she didn’t have to, Henry her boy toy does all the shopping for her! “He even puts it away, and when we cook, he cleans up!”

You know what? I should leave my mother alone, she is well organized somehow, AND a perfectionist, just ask her boy toy. As for Tessie my older sister (much older), do you need any more Apps, before you go off and recharge?