The Continuing Saga of Elmer; The Good News, And The Bad

The good news is that Elmer hasn’t thrown himself in the bay again - yet, the bad news is that to make up for that he threw his phone in the bay.

This is only the latest phone-icide in a string of many over the years. Half the time he accompanies the phone into the bay, the other half the phone makes the trip on its own. This time he claims the phone just jumped out of his pocket and flew into the water and it was over so fast there was nothing he could do about it.

I’m a little skeptical.

Apparently there’s no credible witnesses to verify this one way or the other, but the fishing hasn’t been great (By Elmer standards) and I’m not entirely convinced Elmer didn’t sacrifice the phone to the fishing gods in the hopes of more plentiful bait-snatchers. When the fishing is good Elmer is a happy guy, when it’s not he can be sullen and morose. Happy Elmer is preferable to Grumpy Elmer, but for crying out loud! Surely there’s something a little less inconvenient that would satisfy the fishing gods!

The good news is that when we got word of this latest incident-on-the-bay via Ike’s phone (Which, as far as I know, has never been sacrificed to the bay; though come to think of it, Ike doesn’t catch near as many fish as Elmer.  Could Elmer actually be onto something with the phones??) we just happened to already be on our way down to meet Elmer and Ike for lunch in a half-way-between town. It also just so happens that town has a Verizon corporate store so we dropped in, picked up a replacement, paid the upgrade and activation fees, (the bad news of course) had them load The Wife’s contact list (Largely the same as Elmer’s list which was now swimming with the fishes.) onto the new phone and had it ready to hand over to him when we got to the restaurant.

The good news is this was a rare Friday meetup (most are on a Monday) so The Texas Roadhouse was open for lunch, which includes their unequaled fried onion blossom starter. The bad news was, not only was Elmer grumpy, but he also chose to leave his hearing aids back in the trailer. (Don't need the damn things!) So instead of just a collection of old farts gathered for a nice lunch and some conversation, the shouting, constant repetition and misunderstandings drowned out everyone around us and turned our table into the obnoxious clown-car in a one-ring circus. (I can’t be sure, but I think there was a smattering of applause when the door closed behind us as we were leaving.)

And finally:

The good news is that as Elmer and Ike (Ike doing the driving of course) peeled off to stop at Academy (For some curly-tail lures) and then Sam’s (For a big box of frozen Jimmy Dean breakfast muffins [take one out of the box, pop it in the micro for 90 seconds, tear the plastic wrapper off, lick the melted cheese off the wrapper, then eat the muffin – good stuff! I know all this because Elmer has told me, in detail, about a hundred times now.]) Elmer had a working phone in his hands. The bad news is that the phone wasn’t working too well. . . At least in Elmer’s hands.

Other than some sleeker rounding to the edges and much cleaner keys, the new phone is identical to his freshly sacrificed flip-phone, but for some reason Elmer just can’t seem to get the knack of using this new-phangled piece of crap fone!

Now struggling with technology can be expected from someone that is old enough to remember when the first electric light was brought into their home, but what do you mean you can’t figure out how to call anyone?? It’s the same damn phone! (On which he managed, with little trouble at all, to make over 570 calls last billing period. Thank God for Family Plan!!)

 Of course not being able to call anyone doesn’t seem to include calling The Wife who received some 30 calls from Elmer in the two days following the Great Phone Switch. I had to leave the room once because if I heard her tell Elmer ‘press the dash key at the top right to get your contact list – press the dash key – press the dash key – Dad! press the dash key – press the dash key’ one more time I just might have reached right down the phone-line and pressed the dash key for him. . . and that could have been ugly.

Oh well, one day soon I'm going to be old(er) and then it will be my turn to pull an Elmer. . . (Is it bad that I'm already cackling with malicious glee at the thought of driving The Daughter nuts?)