Comeuppance

As I may have mentioned before, I’m a bit of a late adopter.  My TV screen is not flat. My car (when I had one) did not have GPS.  And, until quite recently, my phone flipped open.  The phone became a bit of an issue.  Since my new job involves social media, everyone in my office has the latest and greatest in calling wizardry.  Left to my own devices, I probably would have upgraded eventually.  Probably.  But I quickly realized that not upgrading might prove to be a career-limiting move.

I ordered my Fancy New Phone (FNP) and immediately put the unopened box on the bottom shelf of the coffee table, where it remained for the better part of a month.  When I finally activated it, the heavens did not open and light did not suddenly fill my benighted life.

But there were little things:

• Two friends and I arrived at a theater only to discover that the movie we wanted to see was sold out.  I pulled out the FNP, found where else the movie was playing, bought tickets for the next showing, and got directions to the theater.
• A few weeks later I was casually shopping and couldn’t remember where a particular store was.  FNP to the rescue; and yes, I had been walking in the wrong direction.
• Last night I turned on my laptop to look for airline tickets.  After a few minutes I saw a pop-up that Security Shield had been installed, and everything on my laptop stopped working.  I tried every trick I could think of, and nothing was getting me anywhere closer to a functioning computer.  Try finding solutions online when your browser doesn’t work.  In desperation, I pulled out the FNP, searched for help, and found very specific instructions on how to fix my problem.  They actually worked. 

I don’t think that the outcome in any of these scenarios would have been drastically different without the FNP.  I could have called Moviefone and found those tickets.  I would have walked around a couple blocks and found the store eventually.  And I simply would have lived without my laptop for the night and, after a fretful night convinced that I would loose everything on it, used my work computer to find a solution.   No, the outcome wasn’t different, but it sure is easier to get there with my FNP.

Just don’t tell anyone I said that.