Negative Gadget Karma

When my husband and I were newly engaged, he decided to take my little boom box outside so he could listen to music while doing yard work. Three days later, I was out in the yard and noticed that it was still sitting out there. It had been rained on and no longer worked. I was a bit shocked because I had it for 12 years and the thing was practically an antique. In fact, it was given to me for Christmas in 1990 and had a CD player before that was common. When you have something for that long, it becomes part of your life. It had travelled across the US several times with my crazy moves and even to the Middle East. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think that was my first sign that my husband had negative gadget karma.

Over the years, I can’t even count how many cell phones and digital cameras have been destroyed or lost in his care. In fact, after a few cameras, I realized that he needed his own cheap one. I bought a nicer one for me and he is not allowed to use mine. Even this past year, he has gone through 2 work phones and managed to run over his company issued lap top.

Why am I sharing this??? Because I hope it isn’t rubbing off…

This week, I have been dealing with a loss. My beautiful lovely life supporting cell phone has been blitzed. It happened when Jordan spit up on my pants right as I was about to go in and do a load of laundry. I noticed that my pants fit the color scheme of that load, so I took them off and threw them in. I think it was twenty minutes later when I realized that my phone was probably still in the pocket. Peeking inside the washer didn’t work. I even pulled the pants out, but the pocket was empty by then. It wasn’t until I was transferring the load to the dryer that I found my sad little red phone.

My husband and I are cell phone people. Throughout our relationship, we haven’t had a home phone or when we did it has been ignored completely. I just can't live without a cell phone, so I rushed right out to get a new one. I went to the closest Verizon store and was told that I didn’t have insurance on my phone, but my husband does. At the time, that decision made sense. The cheapest phone I could buy there was $350 since we had a year left on our contract. He told me about another store that sells refurbished ones and that I might be able to get my same phone for less than $100. I packed the kids back in the car and rushed over there. When I got there, I was told that they were not the store that sold refurbished phones. There was another one. The kids were put back in the car and taken to the third store, which smelled like smoke and had a strange cashier. He pulled out several very cheap looking crappy phones, so I left. He followed me out to the parking lot offering me “great deals.” I told him I had to think about it because those phones were not what I wanted.

My heart was broken. The most tragic part is that I had lots of phone numbers in there that I don’t have anywhere else - silly me. I had even read Reformatting’s Cell Phone Story and decided to save all my numbers, but I hadn’t got around to it yet. The good news is that I ordered a cool LITTLE phone off of Verizon’s website. It even has an MP3 player and was about $150. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll get all those numbers back or how long it will take to get most of them.

One thing I have learned is that negative gadget karma is a horrible thing to live with. I HOPE it hasn’t rubbed off on me. It is hard enough dealing with this kind of thing once in a great while. I also have insurance on my new phone and plan to put all the numbers I get into Outlook.