Monday, May 14, 2012

The Ghost of IPhone Past

This is sort of a tongue in check title to the strange problems in my life that many people might wish they had. But, to me, I long for a simpler life when I was young when I didn't have to constantly think about liability issues because of how my circumstances have changed over the years. It used to be that I could hop on a motorcycle and not particularly worry about whether I had insurance on my motorcycle and then go riding off across country anywhere I wished on roads both paved and dirt. But over the years things changed and kids were born and grew up and went to college (I still have two to get through college). But as you start to get past 40 or 50 (I'm now 64) relatives have  a tendency to pass away and to leave your things (especially if you are only children like my wife and I) and then you have to deal with things like homes in places you don't necessarily ever want to live along with all their furniture and stuff like that.

Like I said many younger people would like to have problems like this. But what is really strange is that the homes and stuff like that really aren't the problem. The problem becomes what do you do with all the stuff in those homes? If your childhood is directly tied to all those things and you really don't want to live there because it is hundreds or thousands of miles away from your own home for 20 or more years what do you do?

And to make all this even more ridiculous was an argument I just had with my wife. We had agreed 4 years ago that we wouldn't put stuff into storage ever outside of our home's garage. But then my wife today finally showed me just how attached she is to stuff when she said, "I want to put some of that stuff into storage!" And I said, "We agreed not to do that because it will be thousands of dollars a year to do that. And besides, likely we will never use most of that stuff." So, since my son was there my wife said, "You need to move out so I can furnish your apartment." So, we all started laughing and I said, "You will never have to buy anything, son. We can furnish any place you want to live!" And then we all started laughing at the absurdity of the moment.

And to add to this craziness and absurdity there is my IPhone that sits on a bureau in my living room inside its protective case like a picture of a lover long ago might hang in the room of a bachelor.

(My IPhone went into the wash about a month ago now into hot water. And even though my son bought tools over the Internet to fix it even a new battery wasn't going to work for long). It started up and said hello by displaying its home page and then it died one last time so now it sits on a bureau in the living room like it did when it actually worked for 1 1/2 years like the ghost of an old relationship now gone with the wind.

Since this time I bought myself a brand new IPad with an internet anywhere connection for about 30 dollars a month. (Because an IPad is too big to ever leave it in your pants, shirt or jacket pocket and run it through the wash.)

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