Some time later, I bought another cell phone. This one was fine, but we kept taking it back to the store to get new batteries. They said something was wrong with the phone, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it because of our contract. Months went by. Finally, we were able to upgrade, which means we were able to turn in our phone and spend more money on a different phone.

We upgraded. Not only that, we bought a second cell phone. What good was just one phone, we reasoned. What if one of us was way over at the grocery store while the other was, say, at the post office? What then?

In short order, we lost one of the phones. The other, I accidentally disemboweled. After charging it, I tried to pull its cord out. It wouldn’t come. I pulled harder. It still wouldn’t come. I yanked as if in a tug of war. It finally came out. So did half the phone’s intestines.

When I took it to the authorized cell phone store, the guy said I shouldn’t have pulled so hard. I said that I tried not to. He said, “Did not.” I said, “Did so.” I said that I had no reason to expect that the insides would fall out. He said he didn’t want to argue, but that I should have expected precisely that because his stereo system has some fancy-dan hookups that will mess things up unless you undo them just so. I said I don’t have a stereo like that.

He looked at me as if I were scraping my knuckles when I walked.

Maybe he was right. But I was a thoroughly modern knuckle-scraper. And, by KSHDD, if he didn’t give me another JSHUUU RACKA-RACKA, I szshh, his freaZHSZZZ in...

Can you hear me now?