This has been The Year Of The Smart Phone here at the Ryan’s, and unfortunately Mr. Cranky Fibro Girl and I have become one of THOSE PEOPLE. You know, the people who will use any flimsy pretext for whipping out their device and boring you silly by making you watch as they scroll through each and every one of their 875,000 apps. Not to mention their eleventy billion photographs.

My mom and dad got themselves Blackberry’s a couple of years ago, so of course the last time we were all together we ended up comparing phones. And then my mom asked me what the difference was between her phone and mine (I have a Droid.)

“Well, my phone is what’s called a ‘Smart Phone’,” I began.

“My phone is smart,” interjected my mom, stricken.

“Um, OK,” I said, groping around for something different to say. “It’s just that my phone is a different class of phone.”

“My phone is classy,” she replied, not understanding why I seemed to be attacking her precious Blackberry.

“OK,” said my husband, “Here’s the difference. When Jenny and I access the Internet from our phones it’s quick, and easy, and nice to read on our big screens. But trying to get online with your phone is like drinking the Internet through a straw.”

So I was feeling all proud of myself a while back because my router in my office fell down, and instead of freaking out and calling my husband I plugged all the plugs back into what I thought were their appropriate places.

And then this weekend I found out that I’d unwittingly sent my husband on a fruitless 2-week search to find out why the Internet wasn’t working in my office, only to discover that it was due to my plugging one of the cables into the wrong hole.

So much for my Technology Victory.

the other day I finally, after five years, agreed to get a new Blackberry. My husband has been trying to convince me to do this for at least the last three years, but every discussion we ever had ended with me yelling, “You will have to pry this phone out of my cold, dead hands!”

And then, all of a sudden, I changed my mind. I don’t know why. But my husband immediately leaped into action, took us straight to the nearest T-Mobile store, and now I am the proud owner of a brand-new, shiny red Blackberry Flip.

So I’ve been reading through the manual and learning what all the buttons do, and today I was so proud of myself because I figured out how to take a picture with my phone and then text it to my husband. That is A Really Big Deal for me, as I am definitely the Padawan to my husband’s Technology Jedi.

So anyway I sent it off, and then I didn’t think about it anymore until I received this email:

“This is a Return Receipt for the mail that you sent to X”

“Note: This Return Receipt only acknowledges that the message was displayed on the recipient’s computer. There is no guarantee  that the recipient has read or understood the message contents.”

Like, in case I might one day just suddenly rise up and decide to try and sue The Ethers, where all the invisible communication transmissions live. Because you know I’m like that.