I don’t much care for cell phone stores. Cell phone companies own them and I haven’t exactly had good luck with these people—hence the reference to these people. But I was with a friend needing a new phone, so I deigned to enter the All U.S. BellHell store (names have been changed).

The staff descended upon us like a pack of puppies, which age-wise they pretty much were. Everywhere we went they followed. Look at a phone and four children (they all looked barely out of middle school) launched into its individual merits. Anyone over 50 who’s bought an electronic anything knows you don’t send children in to deal with adults. Please. With three languages between Brunhilda and me, including English, we had no idea what they were talking about.

All she wanted was a phone with rectangular plastic case, easy to read numbers, bigger than a pinhead and large enough to get an adult finger on without pushing the numbers next to it and a ring tone that sounds like one. Sort of like “brrriinnng.” Like in the old days when the family phone, the one the entire family used, hung on the kitchen wall and you heard it ringing outside in the backyard down by the creek. Remember learning the sound of your ring because we had “party lines,” which had nothing to do with beer and having fun? Ah, the good old days, listening in on Mrs. Butler’s conversations. Oh, and how about the extraordinary idea that when unavailable by phone, you really were? I digress.

Since we had no knowledge of techno-speak and no adult translators were available we just kept walking around until the kids got tired of us and wandered away. Either that, or they got dizzy, it was not a big store. Anyway after about an hour or so, Brunhilda found the phone of her dreams. When she picked it up the kids sent back an emissary to “further assist us” but we shoo’ed him away and headed to the giganto wall poster detailing available phone services. We figured we’d make a list of what she wanted and get back to the youngsters.

It was harder than we thought. Brunhilda could access the web, and her e-mail, back up her phone contacts with a My Contacts Backup option. She could find people she didn’t want to know, locate places she never went, shop for things she might want to buy and play games, if she could manage to see them on the tiny screen. Brunnie could listen to the radio and over 5 million of her favorite songs, probably simultaneously. She could browse, preview and purchase ring tones, do text, pix and video messaging. And while driving (of course) 30 maps would provide traffic directions and congestion updates. After the accident she’d have because she’d be playing with her phone she could push one button for 911. If she had MySpace and Facebook she could access them, too.

And although it wasn’t mentioned, we wrote down the hear-and-talk voice communications option—like Alexander Graham Bell invented.

Brunnie plunked the phone and options list on the desk and said, “I want this.” That was when we discovered Chieryn, Gennara, Spencer, and Marius had been trying to tell us the phone Brunhilda wanted was not for sale. It was a “historical display” model of the “old time” cell phones that were used oh, 5 years ago. Buy one? They don’t even make them anymore.

Cohea, a freelance writer, can be reached by e-mailing a37_tao@hotmail.com.