Jack ‘n Tracie

This is a sad story. But a very true story. Which is why it’s so sad.

For many years, Jack has carried a cell phone, a pager, and a palm pilot his work provided him. One day Cody (then 2 years old) thought he’d see what would happen if he threw the cell phone in the toilet. Nothing really exciting happened, so he pulled it back out and set it on his dad’s desk in a small puddle of toilet water. He wasn’t impressed with THESE results. Parents yelled and got all mad at him and stuff. That cell phone was laid to rest.

Another day, as Jack was shaving, he swears that his palm pilot committed suicide by jumping off the edge of the sink and into the murky, foamy water. I’m sure the palm pilot knew if it was dropped by Jack one more time, that’d be the end of it anyway. It already knew the fate of the pager.

One nice summer day as Jack was strolling through the parking lot, the faithful pager buzzed at his hip. As Jack reached for it, he fumbled a bit and in an attempt to stop it from falling to the ground, Jack managed to fling it about 15 feet across the parking lot, shattering it to pieces.

Coincidentally, Jack’s work stopped offering cell phones as a perk and no longer provided a company cell phone for personal, or even work use.

So Jack and I purchased our own cell phones. For a long time, all was well in our gadget world. But then last week, Jack managed to lose his cell phone. Gone. Poof. It’s nowhere to be found.

After much *cough* “discussion”, Jack and I decided we’d buy ME a new cooler cell phone and he would take my old one. This was a mistake…. a HUGE mistake on my part.

You see, we haven’t replaced Jack’s phone yet. And today he needed to have one on him. I figured it was OK to let him borrow “mine”. Afterall, it’d be “his” soon anyway. Still, I ceremoniously presented it to him, explaining it had all my work and important numbers on it and until we replaced his phone, he needed to take special care of it. He gently took it from me and promised me he would not lose or break this phone. Afterall, he only needed it for one day.

He put it in his shirt pocket, then glanced over and noticed something hanging off the roof of our house. As he approached the thing hanging off the roof he discovered it was one of our dog’s toys. “No problem”, he thinks, “I’ll just jump up and knock it to the ground”.

I watched in horror as my cell phone jumped with Jack, right out of his pocket, and land with a CRACK on the ground. I yell out, “WAS THAT MY CELL PHONE?!?”

“NO Honey it wasn’t! Honestly, um NO NO!” he cries back as he snatches it from the wet (it was raining) ground and stuffs it back into his pocket.

But alas, it was my cell phone. Broken in two places on the screen, never to show it’s pretty menus, pictures, or screensavers again.

In summary:

Gadgets - 0
Jack - 5