Celebrate!

I recently gave a friend of mine some advice for turning 50 (a lot of us are doing that this year--turning fifty, not giving advice.) I said we need to celebrate the stupid things we do. So in the spirit of following my own advice, here is my latest celebration. The day before I left for Virginia to tend Alta, I was running around trying to get everything done on my list. I have a tendency to rush a little too much and I caught my purse on the car door and my cell phone dropped out onto the pavement, maybe fell 2 feet at the most. I picked it up and it was blank. I was sick. I needed my cell because Daniel and Shalane don't have a land line and I had to have contact with the outside world and most of all Mark and Patrick. All through Costco, I would check the phone and take the battery off and put it back on but still blank. I had a few more places to go and decided to drive by the Verizon store in Draper and see if they could give me a loner or fix it fast. Did I say this was a two month old phone and that I really like it. I wondered how much it would be to replace it. I have a very good track record with cell phones and they are always still working and in great shape when my 2-year contract is up. So I run into the store and luckly no one is waiting in line. I write my name in the computer and they call my name right away. I walk over and I am greeted by a nicely dressed, good looking guy in his 20's. He asks me very politely "What is the problem?" I quickly tell him that I dropped it and that it went blank. As I am telling him, he says, "Did you remove the battery?" Yes, I say and before I can say another word, he presses the "ON" key (cleverly disguised with the word END) and it lights up with a little happy sound. This is when I start to say "It has an ON key?" but I think better and run out of the store saying "Thank you so much". As I am running I look back knowing that the guy is waiting for me to exit the store so he can tell his fellow employees about the middle-aged woman who didn't know there was an ON key and why were they letting me own a cell phone. He was just waiting to roll on the floor laughing (ROLF) and to add me to the list of customer stories to entertain your family with. I wanted to yell back at him---"I am a middle-aged women who doesn't know about the ON key, but I do know how to run a computer (OK, only a Mac) and I do know how to text, and I write a mean blog and I can fix sewing machines and other small appliances when I need to and I am really not that stupid." I get in my car and drive away and I think to myself, I am turning 50 in 3 months, is this what it is going to be like? In my own defense though, it was a new cell phone and I had never turned it off, so I didn't ever need to turn it on now, did I?