DEAD IS DEAD

My phone died.

I resuscitate it several times, but each time it comes back to life, it loses some ability: group texting, opening pictures, sending pictures, receiving calls, making calls...  The first time it died, it just needed a new battery.  It cost me less than ten dollars, and I became very adept at removing the back cover of my phone and playing with its inner electronics.

This time when it dies (again and again --- my phone is in the technological version of defib), I have the advantage of knowing how to open the back of it off.  It seems that the SIM card has shit the bed.  If I can get my hands on a pre-programmed SIM card from my cell phone provider, this will be an easy fix.  The SIM card, though, does not exist.  Oh, I can buy a new, clean SIM card, but my provider will charge me to start up the phone again.

This seems to me to be a bit of highway robbery since I'm the one who actually keeps repairing their piece of crap phone. So, I order a new phone.  It's not the latest and greatest, which is fine because that would cost me $700 and up.  Besides, I don't know bullshit about bells and whistles, anyway.

Once I transfer over most of my contacts, I realize that only email addresses have made the transport.  I have to enter my phone contacts (ie: text messages) by hand.  Finally confident that most of my people have come with me through Cyber Space, I decide that it's time to synch the Bluetooth with the phone.

The last time I tried this, my phone was synching up to any number of cars within miles and I ended up at the cemetery down the street.  This time I head to the beautiful garden cemetery about two miles away instead of the closer one.  I figure there will be less traffic away from the train tracks, the  street, and the five-way intersections at either end of the cross street.

I am so wrong.

There are so many cars and joggers in the cemetery that it's a wonder any of the dead can stay that way.  Too much noise; Too much commotion.  I had not planned on so many cars nearby, so I drive exactly where I didn't want to go: the far end of the cemetery, away from the streets and everyone, almost into the woods, near an old mausoleum.

I am halfway through the phone set-up, trying to remember what it is I am supposed to do, when a giant black town car with tinted windows heads right for me, trying to push my stopped car further into the woods.

I back up and pull further into the forest so the giant limo-like car can get around me.  Nope.... wait, he's putting on his directional and he's heading ... RIGHT --- FOR --- ME.   The driver is headed right to (you guessed it) the damn mausoleum.

After three more moves through the cemetery, I finally get far enough away from others and off the small cemetery paths, and close enough to the stone chapel to get my phone synched up to my vehicle without further interruptions.  As long as the extended-stay guests in the cemetery don't start calling me ala Rod Serling, this new phone should be okay ... for a while.