The Quintuple Whammy

I woke up and remembered to call the pharmacy, so I picked up my landline phone. It was dead. It had been dead for 24 hours. Yesterday I searched all over the house for an unhooked phone line. I couldn't find one. Cox promised to come in four days, so I used my cell phone even though it's tricky to "Press One."

 

I went to the kitchen to brew a cup of tea but the microwave was broken. Yesterday I'd made it work by unplugging and replugging it, but today it only stayed on for an instant, then died. I searched for a tin pan to heat tea on the stove.

 

I got ready to go to Tai Chi, picked up the phone, and clicked Lyft. Nothing happened. Oh yes, I remembered, after two hours on the Lyft tech line yesterday she finally decided she couldn't fix it. I should ask a friend to give her Lyft app to me. I clicked Uber.

 

I turned on the radio. If only it did what the salesman promised: play for me any musician I mentioned. I'd spent three afternoons with Bose before the tech guy said in his British accent, "What you want is impossible." He offered instead other radio stations, each full of advertising. Then he suggested a Japanese station; either it never advertises or you can't tell when it does. But I'm tired of all that thin flute music. I miss my jazz, my Bach.

 

Later last night, I sat at the computer writing my novel. My entire book streams 122 pages down the screen. Then, by accident, I hit a green button. My novel spread out all over the entire screen, blocking out everything else. I clicked this and that. Nothing changed. It was 10 pm., too late to call Apple.

 

I'd love to drop out of this digital world, especially on days like today with its five whammies. I long for life in the plain old 1950s when Mama cooked on a gas stove, when she played music on her red vinyl records, when I walked anywhere I wanted to go, when I turned the handle on the wall phone to get the operator, and when I wrote with yellow lead pencil on plain white paper.