It was the loss of my asterisk that put the issue beyond doubt. That and the pink cover. You would be surprised, in this enlightened age, at how many people have difficulty coping with a man carrying a pink mobile phone.
I had not chosen pink but came by it as the result of a failed and misguided attempt to save money, and when the asterisk key detached, took it as a sign from above to get a more blokey phone. I'd been fondling the display phones for fully five seconds when John the salesperson tackled me, greeting me as one would a man who has just staggered out of the desert, showering me with welcomes and a heady blast of bad breath. Eyes watering and twitching, I backed out of range.
"I'm just looking," I bleated, glancing around for an escape route.
Did they do food as well? It was lunchtime and I wondered what the manager's special would be. Steak, salad and chips? Pie and peas? It was a couple of years since I'd bought a phone. Obviously, the marketing strategies had changed.
"A free cordless phone," he said beaming as if offering me the keys to the Heavenly Kingdom.
But John had grabbed a chair and was sitting in front of a computer screen, pounding at the keys. "We're having trouble with the system," he said, hitting the keys with sledgehammer blows and with fingers that resembled pork sausages. Just when it seemed the keyboard would shatter and send the alphabet flying across the room, he bawled for help from Marjorie. I gathered from the look on her face that helping John interface with the computer system was one of the less attractive elements of her daily toil.
"Ah, yes," he said as Marjorie made three deft key strokes and the screen flickered into life.
There was a pause while he did the mathematics. I wanted one. There was one left. One minus one equalled zero. After I'd bought one, there'd be none left. Satisfied that there were no mathematical impediments to my request, he disappeared and returned with the phone.
"You'll want insurance," he said.
He looked at me for several seconds as the idiocy of what he had just said penetrated his consciousness.
"So you don't want insurance," he said, watching his commission flutter out the door.
The system again acquiescing to Marjorie's slim digits, he looked up my details.
"You sure you don't live at The Gap?" he asked.
I began to explain that I didn't because, as one of the world's great fumblers, steering a car and using a hands-free phone was life endangering, threatening not only my life, but everyone's within a 100m radius.
"You need Bluetooth," he said, brandishing an electronic device which I guessed clipped on to the sun visor.
Throughout this, my girlfriend had maintained a tactful silence but, as we left with my new phone, she squeezed my hand and said, "Marc..."
"Yes, sweetie," I said.
|
» geocities.com/psychofrog
© Froggy's World Since 1997
Created by Marc Willems