Nokia, By The Dyslexic Writer

NOKIA
by
The Dyslexic Writer



I have an old Nokia. It does not have a flip cover. Just a naked face when I take it out of my pack, or the Minnie Mouse holder I purchased at Disneyworld when my daughter took me on a family reunion. I have to push a button to turn it off and on.
Also, I don’t have what’s it’s? A GS thing. I’m on my own when lost. No one can locate me with it. Especially the feds. Because it’s an old NOKIA Which is all right with me.
I can call 911, my husband and any family member or even the hospital and my doctor and get information about what to do.
I do have an organizer, text messages, a computer, add and subtract, address book, all the settings I want, memos for the stories I write, games, infra red, so I’ve go all I need in my old Nokia
No, I can’t take pictures, but then I don’t think I want to. I don’t know if I could send them to my computer. The only person I text message with is my grandson and Cellular One, alas now AT&T. I have roadside assistance, I hope. I called and had it installed. Well, I didn’t really call, I just sent a text message of yes. I still don’t know what to do if I need help.
The whole family has Cellular One, now, AT&T, so it doesn’t cost us minutes when we talk.
I use the cell in my office in place of a land phone, but I don’t have to call Hong Kong. Or much outside of Indiana. My business isn’t that great or universal. I’m a psychic. That’s one good way of communicating. Being a physic is one job, another is free lance writer, with emphasis on the free. Same thing for the psychic. Though what I make helps me to pay some bills and still write. The point being, I can contact a lot of folks, living and dead without any phone.
No one can send me a picture except through my computer, but it takes so long and so much ink, I don’t encourage it much. Yep. Even my computer is old. Though I have some great pictures of ancestors, and of the Burning Bush, in the desert in Egypt . Yes, the one where Moses stood and heard God. I will let you figure out those kinds of pictures.
Ok. I confess how I received a picture of Moses and the burning bush. Moses, isn’t in the final picture. He was in the vision. There is this book. Walking the Bible. I read the book, well our entire Quaker Meeting read and discussed it in Second hour. In First Hour, Worship, we have Unprogrammed Meeting. That’s when three or more are gathered and wait for Spirit to speak through us. Or we are just Silent and listening. Sometimes just two.
In the book there is a way to contact a place that houses the Burning Bush. So I did. You have to read the book to find the solution. I got an answer and a picture of the Burning Bush. It wasn’t burning in the picture. I didn’t use my cell phone for that either.
My cell phone is not flat and doesn’t slip easily into my pants pocket. Therefore, I have less inclination to leave it my jeans when I wash them and thus ruin my phone. It’s not flat in my purse where I can never find it, or leave it in a purse when I carry these portable suitcases, like the bag lady that I am. It’s always in a black case with Minnie on the front or a red case both have a bit , not much of bulk and I can find and feel the Nokia. When it’s in my pocket, it is a bit bulky. I know it’s there and I don’t have to look for it.
Except for the time that I was telling my husband that I received the new rental car, was home and describing it to him. My car was wrecked. Not my fault. Then as I was taking my possessions out of the car I called my friend while doing this procedure and described the car to her. After I had removed my purse, books and other items I carry around with me at all times, in case, I’m ever shipwrecked, I started screaming into the phone, “I’ve lost my cell, I’ve lost the cell. How could I lose my cell? Oh my god. I just had it , talking to Norman, (my husband). Oh. I’m talking to you on it. “ She laughed, not couthly, as a lady should. She snorted as did her whole office. I could hear them. Nokia has excellent hearing apparatus. When I called the office again, they said, “have you found your cell phone?” People can be so cruel.
When I go to the grocery store I add up my purchasing on the cell phone computer. Sometime I get a call and lose my place. Sometime I’m brave and don’t answer. They call back. I have a calendar and I can note important dates, and set alarms for time and place so I get there on time.
I set the alarm every morning on my little black Nokia and it wakes me. You have to get up and turn it off or it keeps on going like the Little Bunny, every ten minutes. Ugh.
When I type in someone’s birthday it tells me how old they are, even my kids, but I have to know the date they were born. I never can remember the year my kids were born. So there is a little problem. I can remember the weather the whole day, what movies were on, social events and who was president, but not the year. So I have to track it down. NOKIA doesn't help with that. It does anniversaries and other things, meetings, etc. For anniversaries I have to remember the years they were married or whatever. If I could do that, I wouldn’t need to set an alarm.
And I can put a clock on the front piece where you text message, so when I make speeches or give a talk. I just lay it in front of me, right by my notes and keep an eye on the time, set it on silent and it blinks or vibrates when I should shut up.
So I’ll use my digital camera and my 45 mill to take pictures. learn more about putting them on the computer, or go to The KMart or CVS and make a CD and choose ones to develop. And there dear heart am I with my Nokia Someday I might get a new Nokia, but not for a while. I got my husband a new, well, he’d never had one. A cell phone for Christmas last year. I did it with a great deal of hesitation because he was always bitching about my cell, then asking to borrow it on snowy days when he snowplowed or went to help kids who were snowed in.
Since I bought it he was been on it all the time. In the garage, babysitting, on his tractors, everywhere. If I had known such a toy would have made him that happy I would have purchased it sooner. You just never know with men.
Alas, dear reader, pride goeth before a fall. The one time I did not put my cell phone in it’s pretty little case, instead, stuffed it in my purse side pocket. It was raining. I dropped it. I didn’t know I dropped it until bedtime when I was ready to to set the alarm.
I looked in the car, all through the house, went out to the mail box, nothing. Even thought it was pitch dark, thundering and lightening I went to get the mail box again, thinking I dropped it out there. I slid into the drainage ditch, lost a shoe and the wind blew my nightie over my head. No cars were coming at 12:pm, thank you very much.
When I was walking back to the house the porch light shined on something bright. I went over to it. Part of my cell phone. The dog ate it.
So after ten years, I had to go get another one. I got a NOKIA. Updated. I think I can be located. It has more extra happy little adventure things. I can’t take pictures, thank God, doesn’t have a flip flop top. But the key board moves for some enginering reason designed by someone with little bitty fingers. It’s ok. I still love my old one best. But everyone says they can hear me better.
We really need two cell phones now because my husband is ill. He can’t play with his snowplow in the snow anymore, or drive his tractor, or rush out in the night to save friends, neighbors and children from car disasters. I need it to check on him when I am gone. So hold him in the Light that someday all will be well.

Newsboys, then girls, The Dyslexic Writer newspapers Newsboys, then girls, by The Dyslexic Writer

newspapers
by
The Dyslexic Writer

My husband and I share the morning newspaper with our daughter who lives beside us. When she worked she got it first, read it at work and brought it home to us.
She’s been retired two weeks. That’s another milestone for old folks. Your middle child retires. That’s another blog.
Now that she’s home in the morning, she sleeps. So I, up early, sneak over and snitch the paper. Then we read it and slip it back it the paperbox. Old folks get up early.
My husband and I were talking after reading the paper, I was holding it and folded it into the old fashioned flat and tucked “delivery” paper that we both remembered from our childhood.
My husband remembered because he was a newsboy selling the paper uptown, and I was a consumer paper reader who rushed to the door early in the morning before school and read the paper laying on my stomach on the dining room floor. The dining room floor because the dining room was away from my parents bedroom and they couldn’t hear me turn the pages or fall over me while I was reading. I tended to read on and on and become late for school. Eventually they stopped the paper so I couldn’t do this wonderful thing. A fact that I still find appalling. However, that was not an era when you would do anything to get a child to read. We read everything, cereal boxes, instructions, the paper,etc.
Anyway, we both looked at the paper and remarked on the flat folding.
“I can do this,” I said, “because someone in our neighborhood had a paper route.”
A paper route for you youngsters consisted of a huge paper bag, filled with newspapers, folded flat, that were slung over the shoulder of the paper boy who either walked or rode his bike and threw the papers in people’s lawns. Sometimes hitting the step by the door, sometimes hitting the roof and other places in the yard, making the hunt for the paper part of the morning exercise. I think the bike rider, especially when he got a bigger route got some kind of newspaper saddlebag deal on his bike.
My husband sold his newspapers uptown on a street corner screaming, “Muncie Morning Star, or Muncie Evening Press. Get your news here.”
I am not being gender unpolitical here by saying “he.” , because for a long time only boys could sell newspapers. Finally because of the feminist revolution, boys involved in sports and after school jobs, it was decided that girls could fill in the gap of the much needed newsboy or girl, out of sheer desperation. And girls going to the newspaper office and explaining they could make change, add and subtract better than the boys. (No, they weren’t up to newsperson yet.)
But I also remember the flat paper because someone in our neighborhood was a newsboy, and every so often there was a crisis. Usually all the newsboy’s parents and brother’s and sister’s helped him fold. In a crisis, late delivery of the papers from his boss in a little truck, rain, the family having other obligations, etc. He called upon neighborhood kids to help fold. Sometimes he let us walk with him beside the bike or walk with him when he walked. This was an important occasion in our young lives especially when he was “an older kid.”
We would fold as fast as we could, have kool aid to keep our energy up and were scooted out of the house as fast as they could because the paper had to be on time.
I was the worst paper folder of all time.
“Will you flatted out the paper, like this, then fold in thirds.”
I would nod, Then struggle away.
That was why I was so happy to remember how to fold the flatten paper. I could finally do it after 50 years.
I slipped the now flatten paper was slipped back into my daughters mailbox. My husband and I kept thinking and talking about newspaper delivery day.
“Girls weren’t allowed to sell downtown,” he said because it was dangerous for them. There were bars all over down town and it wasn’t safe” He was right, he probably wasn’t all that safe for boys. Once in a while they got robbed by bigger kids. The bigger kids, bullies were usually caught. Girls finally got paper routes and saved the day. I don’t remember anything bad happening to them. What was good for all the paper girls and boys was learning how to conduct a business. For those kids with news ink in their blood, they worked and worked and got jobs on the paper they loved. Most started as copy boy’s and girls. Become reporters, editors. Going to college in between the newspaper route process or copy girl or boy process.
Downtown when we were young up was a busy place. People everywhere. People selling pencils out of a hat, people sitting on the sidewalk with a hat in their lap collecting money to live on. Sometimes a tipsy soul weaving down the street. Kids out for lunch or after school swarming the sidewalks, cars lined up on the streets bumper to bumper looking for parking places, horns honking, letting people out or in to pay bills, go to work. It was exciting and interesting.
You couldn’t got though alleys, because your mom and dad said so. “Keep your purse on your shoulder tight.” I don’t what they told boys.
They worried about us, but sent us out into this danger zone anyway. We never saw anything happen to us or others. We’d sneak down alley’s, no one got us. We stepped out of the way when someone weaved, which was not very often. We stopped and talked to everyone we knew, teachers, nurses in our doctors offices, dentists, people who worked in the stores, our parent’s friends and watched the world go by. It was an amazing adventure that no longer exists, at least in our town. Crowded streets, crowded stores, people stopping on street corners to talk or in the middle of sidewalk. Making future appointments. Hearing the newsboys shout out the news and then if it was important folks running or stopping to buy a copy.
It was a different world, a more equal world in some ways. Not in others. It was segregated in eating places, maybe in some stores, and different races were monitored, I’m sure as they walked in a group downtown. I think, looking back, there was a strict protocol. Kids were watched as if they were Jack the Ripper or John Dillinger.
My dad always had to go to town to pay bills on his day off. He paid a few. Mostly he walked up and down, met his friends and talked. Stopped for coffee, a sandwich sometimes a drink in his favorite bar. His friends did the same thing.
Kids could not not wait for Saturdays, the kiddie matinees, a cherry phosphate, French fries, window shopping through all the dime stores, sometimes we had money to buy one or two of the following: comic books, cheap perfume, we always at the music store a book of words to the latest songs on the radio hit parade or other shows, sheet music to play the latest songs on piano or sheet music for whatever instrument we played and needed for our next music lesson. There was a a huge store that sold all the newspapers from everywhere, all the magazines from everywhere and books. I loved it there and always bought a magazine Children's Playmate, and short stores.
Sometimes we had saved enough allowance for a blouse or socks. We did not buy clothes without parents unless previously arranged. By the store and our parents. Some of us went to the library. The children's section because it took 14 acts of congress to walk into the adult library and check out a book no matter how well you read. The fact that you read most of the books in the children’s section made no difference. There was not a young adult section. That came a little later. All in all it was a thrilling expedition. The Malls do not even compare to it.
All the time, in the background, over the cars honking, people talking, the earsplitting cries of: Early Morning Edition, Late Edition Morning, Early Evening News, Late Evening news, the paper boys kept calling. “Get Your paper here.”

Newsboys, then girls, The Dyslexic Writer newspapers Newsboys, then girls, by The Dyslexic Writer

newspapers
by
The Dyslexic Writer

My husband and I share the morning newspaper with our daughter who lives beside us. When she worked she got it first, read it at work and brought it home to us.
She’s been retired two weeks. That’s another milestone for old folks. Your middle child retires. That’s another blog.
Now that she’s home in the morning, she sleeps. So I, up early, sneak over and snitch the paper. Then we read it and slip it back it the paperbox. Old folks get up early.
My husband and I were talking after reading the paper, I was holding it and folded it into the old fashioned flat and tucked “delivery” paper that we both remembered from our childhood.
My husband remembered because he was a newsboy selling the paper uptown, and I was a consumer paper reader who rushed to the door early in the morning before school and read the paper laying on my stomach on the dining room floor. The dining room floor because the dining room was away from my parents bedroom and they couldn’t hear me turn the pages or fall over me while I was reading. I tended to read on and on and become late for school. Eventually they stopped the paper so I couldn’t do this wonderful thing. A fact that I still find appalling. However, that was not an era when you would do anything to get a child to read. We read everything, cereal boxes, instructions, the paper,etc.
Anyway, we both looked at the paper and remarked on the flat folding.
“I can do this,” I said, “because someone in our neighborhood had a paper route.”
A paper route for you youngsters consisted of a huge paper bag, filled with newspapers, folded flat, that were slung over the shoulder of the paper boy who either walked or rode his bike and threw the papers in people’s lawns. Sometimes hitting the step by the door, sometimes hitting the roof and other places in the yard, making the hunt for the paper part of the morning exercise. I think the bike rider, especially when he got a bigger route got some kind of newspaper saddlebag deal on his bike.
My husband sold his newspapers uptown on a street corner screaming, “Muncie Morning Star, or Muncie Evening Press. Get your news here.”
I am not being gender unpolitical here by saying “he.” , because for a long time only boys could sell newspapers. Finally because of the feminist revolution, boys involved in sports and after school jobs, it was decided that girls could fill in the gap of the much needed newsboy or girl, out of sheer desperation. And girls going to the newspaper office and explaining they could make change, add and subtract better than the boys. (No, they weren’t up to newsperson yet.)
But I also remember the flat paper because someone in our neighborhood was a newsboy, and every so often there was a crisis. Usually all the newsboy’s parents and brother’s and sister’s helped him fold. In a crisis, late delivery of the papers from his boss in a little truck, rain, the family having other obligations, etc. He called upon neighborhood kids to help fold. Sometimes he let us walk with him beside the bike or walk with him when he walked. This was an important occasion in our young lives especially when he was “an older kid.”
We would fold as fast as we could, have kool aid to keep our energy up and were scooted out of the house as fast as they could because the paper had to be on time.
I was the worst paper folder of all time.
“Will you flatted out the paper, like this, then fold in thirds.”
I would nod, Then struggle away.
That was why I was so happy to remember how to fold the flatten paper. I could finally do it after 50 years.
I slipped the now flatten paper was slipped back into my daughters mailbox. My husband and I kept thinking and talking about newspaper delivery day.
“Girls weren’t allowed to sell downtown,” he said because it was dangerous for them. There were bars all over down town and it wasn’t safe” He was right, he probably wasn’t all that safe for boys. Once in a while they got robbed by bigger kids. The bigger kids, bullies were usually caught. Girls finally got paper routes and saved the day. I don’t remember anything bad happening to them. What was good for all the paper girls and boys was learning how to conduct a business. For those kids with news ink in their blood, they worked and worked and got jobs on the paper they loved. Most started as copy boy’s and girls. Become reporters, editors. Going to college in between the newspaper route process or copy girl or boy process.
Downtown when we were young up was a busy place. People everywhere. People selling pencils out of a hat, people sitting on the sidewalk with a hat in their lap collecting money to live on. Sometimes a tipsy soul weaving down the street. Kids out for lunch or after school swarming the sidewalks, cars lined up on the streets bumper to bumper looking for parking places, horns honking, letting people out or in to pay bills, go to work. It was exciting and interesting.
You couldn’t got though alleys, because your mom and dad said so. “Keep your purse on your shoulder tight.” I don’t what they told boys.
They worried about us, but sent us out into this danger zone anyway. We never saw anything happen to us or others. We’d sneak down alley’s, no one got us. We stepped out of the way when someone weaved, which was not very often. We stopped and talked to everyone we knew, teachers, nurses in our doctors offices, dentists, people who worked in the stores, our parent’s friends and watched the world go by. It was an amazing adventure that no longer exists, at least in our town. Crowded streets, crowded stores, people stopping on street corners to talk or in the middle of sidewalk. Making future appointments. Hearing the newsboys shout out the news and then if it was important folks running or stopping to buy a copy.
It was a different world, a more equal world in some ways. Not in others. It was segregated in eating places, maybe in some stores, and different races were monitored, I’m sure as they walked in a group downtown. I think, looking back, there was a strict protocol. Kids were watched as if they were Jack the Ripper or John Dillinger.
My dad always had to go to town to pay bills on his day off. He paid a few. Mostly he walked up and down, met his friends and talked. Stopped for coffee, a sandwich sometimes a drink in his favorite bar. His friends did the same thing.
Kids could not not wait for Saturdays, the kiddie matinees, a cherry phosphate, French fries, window shopping through all the dime stores, sometimes we had money to buy one or two of the following: comic books, cheap perfume, we always at the music store a book of words to the latest songs on the radio hit parade or other shows, sheet music to play the latest songs on piano or sheet music for whatever instrument we played and needed for our next music lesson. There was a a huge store that sold all the newspapers from everywhere, all the magazines from everywhere and books. I loved it there and always bought a magazine Children's Playmate, and short stores.
Sometimes we had saved enough allowance for a blouse or socks. We did not buy clothes without parents unless previously arranged. By the store and our parents. Some of us went to the library. The children's section because it took 14 acts of congress to walk into the adult library and check out a book no matter how well you read. The fact that you read most of the books in the children’s section made no difference. There was not a young adult section. That came a little later. All in all it was a thrilling expedition. The Malls do not even compare to it.
All the time, in the background, over the cars honking, people talking, the earsplitting cries of: Early Morning Edition, Late Edition Morning, Early Evening News, Late Evening news, the paper boys kept calling. “Get Your paper here.”