OUTDATED

Am I a dinosaur?
I must seem in the eye of this world, an outdated creature. I just sort of live my life staying the same. Not in nature. I do evolve. It's when it comes to every day living. Sort of when I discovered after several years loony that there were no one dollar bills available anymore. Pity. One can fold a one dollar bill in a enveloped letter. A coin doesn't work that way. That was in the time that one dollar still meant something to a young child. Today even in a dollar store that amount ain't much use to anyone anymore. Our new 99 cent or more store, only one year in business, closed it doors after Christmas. In spite of the fact that most prices were raised to more, (much more) they went under. And of course 99 cent never was enough anyhow with tax added.
Just as alert as I was with the withdrawal of the paper dollar, I was with my phone. I still had my old Harmony phone, rented it from Ma Bell. Doing that had benefits, years ago. For example, I didn't have to bother about repairs. I could trade the old phone for a new one without cost. Anyhow, I was made aware at some point that repairs to the phone line were not covered anymore. Not like how one time lightening struck my connection and it was repaired and payed for. So I agreed to a monthly payment added to my bill to avoid high cost if ever something like that would happen again.
My old harmony phone hadn't been replaced for a long time. Apparently for many years. Where do years go anyhow? It worked more and more crappy. The pushbuttons wouldn't push in far enough unless whacked. Often not whacked enough, I got wrong connections with weird messages. So today I decided that I needed a new phone. So automatically I went through the old routines. Phoned Bell for replacement. It took me about an hour to work through phone machines, get wrong connections, or get a person (several times)who misunderstood.. I ended up in Nova Scotia. Everyone assumed, even though I started off with mentioning my land line, rented harmony phone, that I was talking about a cell phone. Sigh!
Finally I got a real woman on the line, who was patient and understanding and explained to me that I had the choice of asking for another rental phone, or much better buy my own, and stop paying rent with no benefits. And wow yeah, of course! How come it never before occurred to me to do that? How could I still live under the illusion that renting a phone was more beneficial, cost wise? Even when I already payed monthly into an emergency fund. I wasted a lot of money, poor dinosaur me.
I have a brand new phone now, a simple, black beauty. Just a phone. No extra features. Just right for a slow, backward sort of person like me. My basic phone bill will be less each month.

Wild Thing