Last week I made two major-ish purchases. Major for me, anyway, and not necessarily because I wanted to, yet “needed to” stretches it a bit. Let’s just say I’ve done my part for the 2020 economy. (You’re welcome.)
Purchase #1
Buying a new cell phone is up there with buying a new car (see Purchase #2) on my Things I Hate Doing list. But over the last few months, my once cracker of an android started performing random tricks like turning off, flipping the screen this way and that when it was perfectly still, and refusing to charge, so it was time to say goodbye.
Because the people I communicate with the most are iPhone users, I looked at buying an iPhone. I consulted my brother-in-law (Mr. Apple Everything) and he advised me to wait until the iPhone 12 was released because the 11s would most likely go on sale, and they did.
I thought maybe buying a phone online would save me the embarrassment of not knowing what I’m doing when buying a phone in a store, but I still felt like a grossly inadequate consumer. The reviews were an amalgamation of John Q. Public liked this and that and Jane Q. Public didn’t like this and that, and finally – bleary eyed and frustrated – I figured… it’s a freaking phone. It won’t change my life. It won’t even change a flat tire. Its usefulness is what I make of it.
It took seven hours and a nearly 90-minute online “chat” with a Verizon rep to get the damn thing activated and the data from my old phone transferred, but I have a functioning and doing-what-it’s-supposed-to-do iPhone (although my granddaughter in the second grade can spell better than its autocorrect).
Purchase #2
I wish cell phones lasted as long as the vehicles I’ve owned. In 2009 I said goodbye to my favorite one ever, a 1995 Jeep Cherokee that I bought in 1998. In a farewell blog, I wrote that I hoped my next vehicle and I would be friends for 11 years, and we were. I bought a 2007 Jeep Liberty, drove it for 11 years, and traded it in for my new friend, a 2018 Jeep Renegade. And while it took a few hours – due mostly to computer and printer problems – the purchase was a refreshingly painless process, one I took care of all by myself – just me and my credit rating – without my boyfriend or father or other male prop present.
If I keep this Jeep for the same number of years as the other two, I will have the Renegade until…(counting on my fingers…1, 2, 3…)…2031? Is that even a year?
Why, yes, it is, apparently. It’s the year my second-grade granddaughter will graduate from high school! It’s the year of my 50-year high school class reunion! Goodness, I’ll be 68 years old! And I’ll still own the Renegade? Shouldn’t I be driving a Buick sedan by then?
I kid. Buick doesn’t make those anymore.
I’m crossing my fingers that nothing else quasi-crucial breaks down that I “need” to replace anytime soon. My checkbook has to catch up first.
Lynn Haraldson, Writer 