New old-phone

I'm low maintenance when it comes to my cellular needs. That's why for the last 2 1/2 years I've had a phone with a cracked camera (just made it that much easier to tell mine apart from Josh's), a scratched body from being dropped dozens of times while doing yard work, and a very partial list of contacts. I know I'm old fashioned, but I prefer to speak out loud on my phone while physically holding it to my ear after having dialed the number of a friend from memory.

Then my phone was baptized (by immersion) in the always clogged gutter by my house and three weeks of being buried in a bowl of rice couldn't save it. So I begrudgingly made a trip to the Verizon store the other day, thinking all the while "a phone is the last thing I should be spending money on right now" only to find--to my utter delight--that the upgrade on my account meant there was a model I could get for FREE. Not send-in-a-rebate free or pay-this-tax free or buy-some-accessory and get it free--no, free in the sense of the word that advertisers never use.

With that lovely four-letter word ringing in my head, I barely even glanced at the actual phone being handed to me along with the description "This is a very, very basic phone. It doesn't even have a camera." No problem, thought I. I have a Nikon to do my picture taking, thank you. What's more, I have a laptop to take care of my written communication (does texting only bother me so much because I can type 250,000X faster?). And my daughter is attempting to stand in the 2-inch space between the phone case display and the wall to the significant detriment of the display. Grab phone, exit store. Mission accomplished!

It wasn't until I got home that I realized that "basic" was as true a characterization of my new phone as "special" is of someone with "special needs." It didn't tell the whole story. One of the first things that caught my eye was the button labeled ICE. Permanent access to Vanilla Ice songs, I hoped? No, it's a list of "In Case of Emergency" contacts. Then I started noticing that the keypad is sort of rippled to allow for easier manipulation of individual keys. Also, the display screen constantly shines my own number back to me and when I go to font size, I have the following wealth of options:

• Normal
• Large

Guess which one is selected? Let's just say that when I change the already 15-point font to Large, the h in Josh doesn't have much breathing room on my contact list.

So, rather than just "basic," the salesman should have said "basically made for the over-80 crowd." And really, I'm fine with that. While I do identify with some of my material possessions, my phone isn't (and doesn't have to be) one of them.

I am rather surprised, however, that Verizon would send me home with a phone featuring a big fat red glowing 911 button at the top of its keypad. It should be illegal to give such phones away to people with children under 25. It's all I can do to stop myself from pressing it for crying out loud!

So if sirens peel around my corner and paramedics rush into my house some quiet evening while I'm cooking dinner and Zoë is otherwise occupied, I suppose I have only my own frugality to blame.