Well, I finally got one.  I'd been needing a new one for quite some time.  I had grown tired of missing out by not being able to capture instantaneous photos with my old one.  Standing idle while others whipped out their cell phones to point and click the fun shots as they were happening was more than just a wee bit annoying.

But, that was a problem I could easily solve just by going shopping; so that's exactly what I did.  Have you bought one lately?  When did it become so complicated?  Just listening to the sales clerk get excited about all the "apps" on the various phones made me want to grab my old one and run to the nearest camera shop.  All the phones were capable of things way beyond my level of interest and abilities, truth be told.  I was struggling to figure out what came as freebies with the phone and what would cost me extra. Visions of phone bills the size of my mortgage circled my mind's eye.

Finally, I settled on one that seemed the least threatening.  I fell for the sleek, slim design and the colourful screen which provided the time of day, weather and  a green phone button across the bottom.  The sales clerk simply took turns pressing buttons and passing a finger across the screen to bring up all manner of options that could be loaded onto the screen for easy access. Fully customizable she said.  Great!  If only I knew what they all meant.  Some were easy to identify: internet, calendar, gmail.  But others were beyond me but only for the moment I said to myself. After all, I taught high school computer classes. How hard can this be?

On the way home, while my husband drove, I started to fiddle with my new phone; learn by doing I thought.  I didn't get very far.  I found it was very much like learning a new program on the computer.  When in doubt, press the back button before committing to something you don't understand.  And so it became, three button presses forward and three back.  At one point I had a handful of little icons on my screen and I had no idea how they got there.  To my delight, a few more presses forwards and backwards made them disappear.

Time to open up the Quick Start Guide to get a grip on what I was doing before I caused irreparable harm to either my phone or my finances.  The guide was a wee bit bigger than an ordinary deck of cards with 23 pages all printed in a shade of dark grey which was on the verge of being beyond my prescription lens.  Not at all the sort of thing one could read in a moving vehicle in the bright light of a sunny afternoon.  It pointed out that a more comprehensive guide could be found on the web.  Thinking the computer screen would be easier to read, I opted to check it out.  I quickly discovered why that had not been printed and put in the box with the phone.  It was 146 pages long; 146 pages to to use a phone!  Did I say it was complicated?

Having no time to invest studying all this, I tossed my phone into the dark abyss of my purse.  A few days later it rang.  As I am not in the habit of giving out my cell number, and use it mostly for outgoing calls when I am on the road, I still hadn't got around to figuring out how to use it.  The screen was black so I thought I had to touch the screen to turn it on.  As I did so, I hung up on the caller who immediately called back.  After doing this a couple of times, I realized that with a little patience, the screen would light up and instructions would appear.  I was not to press anything but simply pass my finger across the screen in a downward motion and the call would be answered. Who knew?  Obviously not me. That was probably on page 101!

Since then I have managed to record my voice mail message, pick up my messages and add some contacts.  I have managed to take some cool pictures.  I have also taken some shots which are not keepers but I haven't found the delete button for those as of yet.  I have sent some text messages to my family who were beginning to think I'd traveled to the land of the techno-phobes.  All in all, the learning curve isn't quite as steep as it was.  Mind you, I haven't received my first phone bill yet!

Note to Self… Keeping up with technology is a challenge but the rewards far outweigh the bumps and bruises. It also keeps us young and in the game.