I know you’ve all been there. At least if you have an iPhone or other
smarty-cell phone. Sometime your cell
phone has made a call for you that you did not intend. If you are lucky, you stopped the call before
the other person picked up. Though,
despite your best efforts to hide the fact your pocket made a call, the call’s
recipient probably could tell you had called.
How did we ever manage without Caller ID? I remember thinking it was a silly idea when I
first heard of Caller ID. Why did I need
to know in advance who was calling? Wasn’t
that the purpose of telephone etiquette—where the caller says “Hello, I’m John
Doe. Is this Dorothy?” I only took
Caller ID service because I worked for a phone company, and my assistant got some points if we
all took the service. Or maybe she lost
points if we didn’t. Despite my
skepticism, after one day with Caller ID I was sold. I wondered, “Caller
ID, where have you been my whole life?”
I don't think I’m the only one. No longer do most people answer a phone call
blind. We’ll want to know who is
calling. We also no longer need to be
able to recognize the voices of our family and friends. Even mental telepathy and ESP are
obsolete. We now have Caller ID.
But back to that butt or pocket-dial. Your friend or acquaintance whom you called by
mistake--they either called you back or pretended to not notice you'd
inadvertently placed a call. If you’ve
been less lucky, some friend or relative listened to you while you muttered
over grocery prices as you pushed your cart through the aisles, or pumped gas
or, worse yet, engaged in a real-life conversation with a companion that they
could overhear.
I think I’ve done all those things. I even butt, or pocket-dialed an acquaintance
while walking my dog and--as I bent to pick up my dog’s deposit--dropped my
sunglasses into that deposit. Sort of
the trifecta of screw ups.
You might be surprised at the words I used to express my
dismay at the sunglass/dog poop situation. I was surprised at the words I used. Suffice it say—they would not have been
acceptable to the nuns who taught me. Or
to my Mother. And the person I had
inadvertently called on my cell who was listening to the whole verbal deluge
was a friend of my Mother’s. No doubt,
given the luck I was having that day I probably said a number of things that
would not have been acceptable to any of my Mother’s friends. Oh well...it was that kind of day.
Recently, I’ve topped even the “pick-up-dog-poop-drop-sunglasses-in-dog-poop-butt-call-disaster”
incident. Now my cell phone has taken to
making phantom car calls on its own.
We bought a car that communicates with my iPhone through
Bluetooth. Sounds pretty cool, eh? My car stereo (do they even call them stereos
any more or is that a sound system?) will play audio books, podcasts and music
from my cell. How wonderful has
technology gotten? The car-cell
collaborative strategy also will play GPS directions and probably will drive my
car when I’m not paying enough attention. I think the artificial intelligence
collaboration between my cell and my car has reached the awareness stage.
I may start to call my smarty-car-cell collaborators “Car 54”. If you are not old enough to remember the TV
program “Car 54, Where are you?” I’ll
summarize it briefly. Two police
officers patrolled in a police car assigned that numerical designation. The officers were always up to hijinks and
rogue behavior. But only in the nicest,
most humorous ways. You can watch a bit at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQfXPGCYlfI
As I think my car and cell are likely well intentioned, and
since I am so much at their mercy, I will give them “Smarty Car 54” as an
affectionate, but nostalgic name in the
hopes they use their considerable combined power in a helpful and benign
manner. Also, that way, when my car and
cell phone team up and go rogue, I will have a named entity to blame.
Recently, my Smarty Car 54 decided to call one of my sons. I had not touched my cell phone or even said
anything to it. I think perhaps I turned
on the windshield wipers. But I had no
awareness that I had done anything that would result in a call to my son.
What takes the cake is the occasion when my husband’s call
was answered in my car while neither my husband nor his cell were in the car. I was leaving for an appointment, pulling out
of our garage in Smarty Car 54, when a woman started talking to me from my car.
The woman appeared to think she was
talking to my husband who happened to be sitting not in the car but back in our
kitchen. He had been on hold on his cell
phone when I left the house. Apparently,
my husband’s cell through Bluetooth switched the call to my car sound system
just as the called party picked up the call. Luckily, my husband was not engaged in any
smarty-pants behavior. Unluckily, I was
suddenly talking to his insurance provider.
So now both of our cell phones were ganging up with our car
to confuse the hell out of us old folks who were just trying to do normal stuff
like make phone calls on a phone. Or drive a car. But not at the same time.
The only thing I could think to do was to drive the car into
the kitchen and let the lady talk to my husband. No, I didn’t actually do that. I did run back
inside and ask my husband to get in the car and talk to the lady who was
talking to me and see if he could get the call back on his phone rather than in
the car I was planning to drive away. He
did. I drove away a bit later. The Smarty Car 54 hijinks certainly gave me an
excellent excuse for why I was late for my appointment—my car had been tied up
on a call with my husband’s insurance company.
Currently I am lucky if I can get my car to play the radio. I
do not even try to replicate any of my smarty-car-cell
phone hijinks, at least not intentionally. But apparently, I can do it unintentionally. My brother recently told me he had received a
phone call, supposedly from me, and the call sounded like it was from my
washing machine. I assured him it must have
been the Smarty Car 54 that called him. As
I told him—the washing machine has had it phone privileges taken away until it
gets the laundry done without my having to sort the clothes, lift the baskets,
add detergent and fluff or fold.
