I bought a new phone.

The phone I had was dandy, but like all computer devices it is meant to croak at the most rotten time possible.

For most phone helots, a pristine wonder device is like getting a shiny puppy that doesn’t hack up loogies on the orange shag carpet.

For me it means a period of anxious adjustment that ends when the phone finally dies and I have to buy a another unworkable deception.

Why do you think the inventors of these machine demons sit in dark caves looking at shadows cast on the walls by a marshmallow fire and never talk to the people stumbling around in the light? The folks above are stumbling because everyone is looking down at their phone.

Let me provide a journalistic timeline to validate my point of view.

First, I began frantically searching for a phone because my evil device was randomly calling all sorts of people for no reason. At one point I was ordering a $3 shirt and next thing I know Russian President Vlady Putin was on the line. I suspect he wanted my cool-looking shirt.

After checking around I discovered the price of a new phone was more than my first year tuition at the U (I admit writing with rocks was cheaper and it made the baseball more exciting).

I finally found an updated Dixie cup and string for about $75. It about killed me to shell that much out. That adds up to a lot of $3 stripy shirts.

Once home I had to take my chain saw out to get the box open. Inside was a massive pile of books, some threatening, some giggly about hooking another sucker.

With a pile of screwdrivers, drills and hammers, I eventually got the thing to ring and act like some semblance of what Mr. Bell had in mind… maybe.

Then I received a call… from my daughter Katy. She was checking to see if I was taking proper care of her dog, Yodie, the other demon in the house.

As the phone rang, and rang, and rang…. I realized I couldn’t figure out how to answer it.

Let’s not put a button with big letters stating, “Push here and I will answer.” No, we wouldn’t want to do something clear and easy. Let’s be chic. Answering a phone is a perfect time for a metaphor.

At this point I was certain God couldn’t figure out how to answer my newly buffed tin can.

After a series of threats with my motor-driven screwdriver, Katy’s voice suddenly appeared.

I tried to explain my dilemma to her, and I got the daughter tone: “Better buy some extra tennis balls for his walker.”

Eventually Katy told me the swipe secret for answering. Who thinks these things up? And who pays them to think it up?

Once I finally was provided with the secret swipe code, I found out from an uncover source if I swipe the wrong way I will end up on a blind date with Attila the Hun’s distance cousin – not by marriage. I thought after the Rome thing the bunch traveled to a far-off island to get tans and drink fuzzy grapefruit juice.

Now I am afraid to touch my phone. If I get the left-right swipey thing wrong who knows what could happen. I don’t like hot weather. I like rain… lots of rain… and gray days.

I will never understand why we left a perfectly good Iron Age for the era of cool things that never work right and no one ever tells me the secret swipe right thing, or is it left?

I don’t even know what a swipe is.