T£CHNOFEAR

Today I have to upgrade my phone.

it has been a worthy foe over the years, 

and i shall surely miss it.

For example the way it used to take messages i was trying to send to someone and just pick someone at random from my phonebook that it felt to be more deserving of the message and send it to them instead,

thankfully (and strangely miraculously consider we are talking my life here) i never got caught out inappropriately sexting (LOL i don't really do that) or bitching and whining about someone and how their face and life makes me want to hurt them (Lol i TOTALLY do that).

So bon courage phone, alas we hardly knew ye!

The BIG failure and horror about this whole situation is the fact that I have to get a new phone, and when I try to buy phones it usually goes something like this:

Me: 'uh. i want a phone that... um, you can take pictures?'

Orange Saleskid (we shall call them Agent Orange): 'yeah, they all do that these days.'

Me: 'huh. well, i want one where I can set my own music as like, the ringtone and alarm and stuff.'

Agent Orange: *slowly cottoning on that they are dealing with a moron* 'yes. ALL phones do that.'

Me: *beginning to sweat and panic due to social awkwardness of having to engage with someone for this long* umm... *scans phones attached to desk with string wildly and bolts towards nearest one*

'This one? is this one any good??'

Agent Orange: 'I'll power it up so you can have a play'

Why do they say that?? 

'power it up' like its some sort of flux capacitor...

'have a play' like we're just two normal people having an apparently casual discussion about buying phones.

What is the meaning of all this madness??

by now Agent Orange has returned with the phone, so i can go through the rigmarole of turning it on and jabbing wildly at buttons, 

making reassuring noises like, 'uh huh' 'ahh, so this is this...' and 'but how do i...? ah yes. yes, i see' 

to try to disguise the fact that i have no idea whats going on, and regardless of this fact will never read the manual and opt instead to treat my phone with a mixture of fear and contempt until I am due for my next upgrade which I assume will solve all of life's problems. 

So this is where i head off to this afternoon. 

I am wearing extra eyeliner 

in an attempt to look feminine, so that if the Agent Orange is a man / chauvinist pig he will assume that my tiny woman's brain cannot possibly cope with the complexities of selecting a phone and just point at one so i can snatch it up and run off into the distance, laughing and playing polyphonic ringtones into the still dusk air.