Last Saturday, my husband woke up with a great idea. It was a beautiful morning and he suggested that we head out to Parke County, Indiana for the Covered Bridge Festival. I have to admit that the idea of seeing nature at it's most colorful, appealed to me. So we made our plans to go.
As I was getting dressed, Philip - my husband, put his hand on his jaw (like he often does when he is hatching an elaborate plan) and said "We could go by that phone place I was telling you about and check them out. Squealing tire sounds could be heard in my head. "What....no, I don't want to go shopping!" I grunted. I know how he is when it comes to shopping - (it's an all day event).
"This store is on the west side", and "We'd be heading that way anyhow," and "You need to pick out a phone," and "It won't take long," and "We'll get back home before dark (I have things to do in the garden)."- sales pitches came rolling from his mouth. He wanted to go look at phones. Me, being the easy mark that I am, said "OK, OK. I'll go but let's not spend all day looking at phones and phone plans.....UGH!" Then he does a turn around and says that he can't do it today because he doesn't have his latest bill with the account number on it and he was told he'd need a current bill. I breathed a sigh of relief.
We get in the car, fire up the GPS/Garmin and set out for a beautiful day in nature. When we got to the west side of Indianapolis, Philip remarks "That phone place is right near here." I cringed. We have now started re-negotiations. "I thought you needed your bill with the account number." I argued.
"Let's just go look at the phones." he replied. And with that we programmed in the address for the phone place and headed their way.
Right away we had trouble finding the place. It didn't have a store front. The shop was located in an old strip mall. We find the place. Amazingly enough, the parking lot was full. We park and head for the entrance. Let me describe what I saw. There were sliding doors, like you might see at Walmart, except these sliding, glass doors had metal strips (like you see in cabinets to support the shelves) screwed across the inside of the glass panes - thereby thwarting any attempt to smash the glass and break into the building.
Inside the building, Mariachi music blared from the sound system. The carpet had given up being a floor covering and was now working on becoming part of the concrete beneath it. There were booths everywhere. Mostly marked by their chain link fence walls covered over with pure blue tarps. Most of the merchants were selling tatooey design t-shirts, moped equipment , fancy/frilly little girl's party dresses or big girl's 'party' dresses.
We proceeded to the back of this lovely assortment to find the phone place. A guy who looked to be about 16 stood in front of the counter. Another man, behind the counter was talking to a customer in Spanish. Philip approached the 16 year old (he was probably actually 25 but everyone looks like a baby to us).
He started asking a million questions of this kid. And the young man tried to answer all of Philip's questions. They looked at the various phones that would be included in this 'new' phone deal. Then Philip asked more questions - something about programming and something about flashing. They looked at the phones again. Then Phil asked more questions, the kid went in back and brought out another phone, which they looked at and more questions were asked and then they looked at the first group of phones that they had previously discussed. I was losing my mind!
At one point, when the kid went to ask a question of the 'man behind the curtain" (wall) (and he did this several times), I pulled Philip aside and asked him "Honey, has it occurred to you that these guys could be gone from here, this time next week?" Philip shook his head in agreement and the kid returned with more phone information. Then, they looked at the phones again.
We ended up buying one new phone which turned out at check out was actually a used phone and we had my phone reprogrammed to accept the new service. We had to leave these phones at the phone place for all the reprogramming. So two hours after we'd first entered phone world for phones, we left phone world without phones and headed to Parke county and all of autumn's natural beauty.
Around 6pm we started back towards home. Phil tried to call his brother on his old phone (they told him at the phone place that if he used his old phone to try to make a call and it didn't work, that meant that his new phone was reprogrammed). We decide to swing by the phone place and pick up our phones. It was a mad dash.
We get to the phone place with about 30 or 40 minutes to spare. Unfortunately, they had not ''flashed' the phones. We wait and wait. The entire mall had taken on the aroma of sweaty, gym socks and over the sound system the folksy music had changed to a more Saturday night leaning with a rapper crooning on about "F this" and "F that" in a 'lovely' chorus that never actually switched from the chorus. I look around at all the young kids running around in the place. Children who have to hang out at this joint because their families are trying to make a living. An hour after our arrival, we leave with Phil's new (used) phone, leaving mine behind because they were having trouble flashing it.
As we headed home, Philip began to grumble about the whole phone place experience. "Nobody told me that this was a used phone, I didn't want a slide/touch screen, I should have" blah, blah, blah. At first, I almost tried to console him but then I just sat back and enjoyed the drive home. It's like they say, "experience is the best teacher."
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