I always look forward to that day when it is time to renew my cell phone contract, and I am eligible for a new phone. The cell phone is always sweeter on this side of the contract. (Sorry–couldn’t resist.) Surely, surely there is one perfect phone out there. My old model was a pretty good one—easy to use, had my kind of bells and whistles—but the signal just wasn’t as strong as I wanted. So I began the search last weekend.

I finally settled on a Nokia because of its signal strength and stability. Yes, it takes pictures. Yes, it takes videos. Who cares? After signal strength, I value polyphonic ringtones, group ringtone capacity, and a voice recorder. The speakerphone, a new feature for me, is great as well. And, yes, I caved and got bluetooth.

There is always a learning curve with a new phone, especially when switching brands. Throw a new bluetooth headset into the fray, and the result is Keystone Cops. My daughter called me at work a couple of days after getting my new phone. Understand that I work in a quiet office for a boss who doesn’t want us talking on the phone—cell or otherwise. One of my coworkers said, “Oh, there’s that pretty music again!” Uh oh, it’s my cell phone which was sitting on my desk. It’s too new for me to recognize the ring tones yet. I dove to answer it before it rang again. I flipped open the case, said hello, and…..nothing. Puzzled, I heard a far-away voice saying, “Hello? Hello?” Jeepers! I forgot I had the bluetooth on. I was trying to run down the phone battery all the way (per the manual) so I could recharge it.

I grabbed the bluetooth headset and tried to put it on my ear. I could not for the life of me figure out which way it went. Meanwhile, the far-away voice kept repeating, “Hello? Hello?”

“Just a minute!” I shouted into the end of the headset, hoping she could hear me. I started to giggle.

I hit the button on the phone that I believed would convert the call back to the handset. It didn’t. Instead, I had put my daughter on speakerphone, and now the whole office was hearing my call. I started pushing buttons again and thought I had disconnected her. Oh, well, I’ll call her back. I pushed the speed dial button. A message popped up telling me, “You can’t do that!” A red stop sign reading “error” accentuated the point. Huh? Weird. I was trying to figure out what would cause that strange error message when I heard a voice in the background shouting, “Hello? Hello?” Ay yi yi. I couldn’t call her back because she was still on my line! I had put myself back in bluetooth mode, the headset laying on my desk.

I fumbled with the phone buttons some more. I pressed the button on my bluetooth to turn it off, and the phone screen went blank. I pressed a side button to turn on the backlight and realized my battery had picked that exact moment to finally die.

I dug in my briefcase and found the phone charger, plugged it into the Tiffany-style lamp on my desk, and hit speed dial again.

“Helloooooo…I figured you would call me back when you got things under control.”

I was laughing so hard I could barely talk.

Thankfully my co-workers kept right on working and didn’t give me a hard time about my inability to cope under stress. Ha! Now my not-so-willing husband is required to call me regularly so I can practice answering the phone.