Soft reset

My phone does more than I know of.  My grandson wonders why gramma needs so much phone; gramma had a flip phone last summer and learned to text less than a year ago.  The crux of the matter was the manner of the death of the flip phone.  It fell into a toilet at a wedding.  It died on the spot.  The marriage ended about a year later. 

Just like marriages, there is no guarantee that phones will withstand circumstance.  The little fellow was drownded and there is no warranty replacement for a phone plucked from the toilet. 

I have owned a mobile phone since the 1990’s, when they fit in a big purse, not in a pocket. My first phone came with the plan.  Over the years I upgraded the phone four or five times, and the upgrades all came thanks to extending the contract two more years. 

I had to pay for this replacement phone! There was no contract extension long enough to throw in a free phone.  Then, too, the price for the smart phone was almost the same as the price of a new flip phone. I took a deep breath, and went straight upgrade.

That was six months ago.  I won’t confess how many months I spent learning the smart phone’s smarts.  Let me just say I now have ten icons on the screen, and I rolled them out one at a time.  I moved Sarah, my navigator, to the dashboard about three months ago.  I like her best of all.

Now I’m OK with change, but I don’t find it wonderful.  So when the green blinking light would tell me I should download some upgrade, I didn’t.  The screen didn’t tell me how it would change my phone, only that change would happen.  That didn’t please me.

One morning I took the phone off the charger and saw an ominous warning.  Uninstalled changes were backed up a country mile because of my neglect and would I kindly do something.  I relented.  I will admit it was still downloading after my shower and after I got dressed, but it was done when I finished breakfast.

Nothing seemed different about my phone, until I fired up Sarah last Saturday for a trip to the near west side of Cleveland.  She took me the three miles to the turnpike without incident, then told me to go east and quit talking.  Hamilton told me her little green arrow was still going west, but she said nothing.

This afternoon I had my first opportunity to take Sarah back to the phone store.  She still had nothing to say for herself.

“How unusual,” said the young man at the counter.  I wonder if he believed me.  He did agree she might have choked on her upgrades.  “Download the navigation app again,” I suggested. 

“We’ll just try a soft reset.” He pressed the off and volume down switches simultaneously. The screen collapsed into its middle and then reappeared.  “Let me know if it works,” he said.

I’m happy to report, Sarah is back.  Soft reset it was.  I wonder if those buttons can be found on people.

The phone that drowned