The Adventure

The length of this post should hopefully make up for my lack of posting recently. I definitely have slacked off. :/

(Pointless observation: does anyone else think that the websites blackpeoplemeet and christian mingle were created by people with ulterior motives? Like, the person behind black people meet was tired of the MIT “thug” his precious daughter was dating and decided to steer said thug in the direction of other available black women? And christian mingle was actually masterminded by an atheist who was tired of getting dumped for using bible verses as witty comebacks-- which is a sin. 

Anybody…?

No?

Well, okay.)

So, getting my phone was not as easy as I thought it’d be. 

Sure, I’d spent the last month or so putting money aside and even using the cheap washing machines at the Laundromat to have some quarters left over to add to the LG fund. And yes, I did have enough to pay for it in the end (but embarrassingly had to borrow money from the person who was with me to pay for the activation fee + new phone bill… :/)

But the day was one of those… unfortunate ones where everything that can go wrong, does.

It all started when I got the phone and was accompanied by my grandpa. I’d neglected to tell him just how much a smartphone was, as he still sees them as “newfangled high technological devices”, so as soon as he saw the price tag, he started bitching at me about how I consistently waste money. 

It’s an argument I've been hearing my whole life, and I’m damn tired of it. 

This made buying the phone much less exciting than it otherwise would've been, and I felt like an ungrateful skank for secretly regretting the purchase for basically the whole day.

However, I managed to suck up those emotions and instead focus on how I would now need to activate and switch phones. I stopped at a Metro PCS store to get it activated, but the girls working there informed me that it would be free to activate it over the phone.

Not wanting to leave empty handed I spent $10 on a pretty pink phone case and immediately went home to do what I thought would be a very simple thing.

How wrong I was.

Apparently I didn't have the passcode associated with my phone. Rather than helping me by telling me what that passcode could be (ie bar code, date of purchase, etc.) the woman “assisting” me merely told me to find the code and then hung up.

Bitch.

So, I called an actual Metro store and was informed what the code would be and was then able to figure it out. Yay!

The fact that I had to call the store to get the help I needed should’ve told me then and there to just go in and let them help me. But after the strong words from my gpa earlier, I really didn't want to feel like I was throwing more money away when there was a cheaper (free) solution.

So, armed with the passcode I called back and was relieved to get a new person. We went through all the steps, which involved numbers, numbers, numbers. Barcode, battery code, lots of fucking codes. 

I informed the woman helping me that I use a shared phone line with my grandpa (his phone bill is only $35) and that our numbers are similar. The only difference is the last number.

She understood and made a big show of repeating my phone number back to me to confirm that this was the number the new phone was attached to. She then had me do some fancy phonework and I got a message that my phone was being activated. I very nearly hung up, thinking that that was all that was needed until…

The activation failed.

We were both very confused, so she had me try again. And again. 

And one more time.

When all of that failed, she guided me through manually programming my phone. I entered everything I was told. Read the numbers and codes back to her, and then waited patiently for my phone to be properly activated. 

Twice.

Because it Did Not Work.

In then end, she sighed and told me to do what I should’ve done from the very beginning: go to a metro store and activate the phone. 

I wanted to pull my hair out! 

My grandpa had the car, so I had no way of getting to a metro store. And worse, the store would be closing in 30 minutes.

I knew I could’ve just waited until the next day and gone in, but my regret for buying the phone was starting to creep in again. I knew if I waited another day, I’d probably just go back to the store and return it. 

I really wanted to love something I’d spent so much money on, so I would feel justified.

So, I put on my big girl panties and borrowed somebody else’s phone (since mine was officially off) and called my gpa.

And got his answering machine.

ARGH!!!

I tried to call twice more, wondering why the man who NEVER turns his phone off, not even at night or during movies, would suddenly have it off now. 

I had to find him and track him down, or I would suffer from a major case of buyer’s remorse and that is not how I wanted to start off the new year.

Fortunately, I knew where he was, so I grabbed my old phone, my new phone, my purse and the last shreds of my dignity and set off to track him down. 

And I only had 25 minutes left….

Miracle of miracles, he was exactly where I expected him to be: sitting in a parked car in front of my Uncle’s house, hiding from my grandmother so he could drink his Busch in peace.

A peace that I ruined when I hopped into the car and demanded he drive me to my destination (he’d only had a fourth a can of beer and he’s a lifelong drinker, so he wasn’t even thinking about being tipsy yet).

I explained the situation and then entered into one of the loudest silences of my life, where he gave me his, “I’m reconsidering my fondness of you” look. I didn’t have time for that, though. 

Fortunately, his two sips of Busch and handful of pork rinds had made him kind and he agreed to drive me there with very little fuss and lots of pointed stares at stop signs. 

I didn’t care, though. 

I was finally en route to cleaning up this mess of a day and nothing was going to stop me.

Not even my grandpa’s huffs of annoyance and impatience and the lecture I knew was soon to come.

Not even all the red lights we were getting at EVERY SINGLE  INTERSECTION. 

Not even the red and blue flashing lights behind us…

Fucking hell.

We got pulled over.

Apparently, the car had an expired tag. I hadn’t known this. My grandpa had, but pretended he had not. 

I was shitting bricks the entire time, partly because we now had LESS THEN 10 MINUTES LEFT and partly because I was terrified the cop would smell the beer on my gpa’s breath. He’s too old and too sweet to go to jail and if he did, it would be all my fault. All over some stupid expensive phone that didn’t even have the decency to be expensive enough to cover his bail and everyone would hate me and my grandmother would cry.

I was, in fact, about to cry. I hoped I did and I hoped the cop saw it.

Unfortunately, I was too frustrated to cry, but it was fine because the cop let us off with a warning.

Five minutes left.

We were still two blocks away. They could make a whole fucking movie about how tense I was and a sequel about the lecture my grandpa gave me when it was all over.

And finally we were there.

And it was…..

………………..

………..

……..

…

OPEN!!!!

Holy sweet batman, my life!

I rushed into the store armed with my phones and my relief and went straight to the man working there, who is actually a friend of my brother’s.

I hoped that fact would get me a free phone activation.

It did not.

While activating my phone, this man solved the final piece of the puzzle of that night’s adventure: the reason my gpa’s phone was off AND the reason the activation didn’t work is that the woman assisting me on the phone had used my gpa’s number instead of mine.

Bitchx2.

Anyway, I was SO happy to have my phone in working order, that it must’ve rubbed off on my gpa, as he willingly paid the activation fee for me.

His good humor quickly vanished when he also had to pay the remainder of our new phone bill, which had gone up considerably thanks to all the bells and whistles needed for my new phone.

Fucking hell.

Oh well. At least I got to leave that night armed with a shiny, new working phone.

And my gpa got to leave with new proof that I really am a monumental money waster and now has enough material to spend the next 24 years of my life bitching at me about this. 

Ah well.

Alls well that ends well….

Until you’re driving down the street a week later and you spot a sign with a picture of the phone that gave you hell and that you paid $148 for, now on sale.

For $49.

…..

My grandpa saw the same sign, too.

……….

Fucking hell.

Bye sweets. <3