Sweat Fret

There is moisture caught between my iPhone and its case. This is a crisis – it has caused my beloved device to hibernate.  I am depressed by how depressed my lack of a functional iPhone makes me.   Every few minutes I try to slide it back to life.  Each swipe fails.  It rings, but I cannot answer it.  And, although it is an iPhone, not having the phone is not the part I am most upset about.  It’s being teased by only the first snippet of a longer text, not being able to catch up on emails at a stop light (if you’re in law enforcement, please ignore that last sentence) and the lack of access to my beloved apps – my name is Amy and I am a word game junkie –that I miss about the Apple of my eye.

Turns out I’m a tummy sweater and thus should not have stored the phone in my waistband while hiking with my friend and her dog this morning.  Even as I face the mid- century mark, I’ve learned something new about myself.  Surprise, I’m a stomach sweater who needs to wear pants with thicker pockets when I hike.  Does the list of the indignities of aging never end?  Did my midsection always perspire and I just didn’t notice it in my spandex-clad youth? Is it because I now have a stomach versus a tummy that my midsection is moist?

I know my boobs sweat, which is why I didn’t shove the treasured device in my bra.  Maybe it would’ve been safer there.  When I had a Prius, I would sometimes – when wearing something without pockets – tuck the key in my cleavage, as you don’t have to insert it, just have it within the vehicle in order to start the car. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I would take off my bra and the key would drop on the floor.  It still worked after such days.  My Apple is more sensitive and now I am without it.  If I shed tears on my laptop, would it hibernate too? Because, and I am most definitely fretting about this reality, I could cry I miss my working iPhone so desperately.

“Just open the case, nimrod,” I imagine readers advising me.  Obvious. But, I can’t. This is another midlife revelation –I need to learn to uncase my Apple-ette because my husband isn’t always by my side to de-worm my Apple woes. On the plus side, it makes me miss my husband and reminds me of just how handy he is to have around the house.  On the downside, he is at work and I remain phoneless.  I wonder if my husband would come home from the office – I’d make him lunch for the effort – to fix my phone?  Do you think he’d be flattered or insulted that I only want him for his phone case prowess?  Do you think I need to offer sex for phone case services?  Do you think that might work?

Grr… my phone is still hibernating.

While the rest of the world goes about its business, I sit in limbo, swiping at my screen using various fingers, applying varying pressure, trying to press through the purgatory that the moisture has created between my phone and its case. Nothing works.

I have the iPhone 6 Plus, it is large and sturdy – except with regard moisture as I’ve learned – and feels so very good in my hand.  I read on my iPhone a lot, so enjoy that the 5.5-inch screen allows me to use large print without making even a newspaper article the length of War and Peace.

I hear the front door.  My husband is home! I have to refrain from running down the stairs to shove the phone into the hands that will revive it.  Salvation is near. I sit with my laptop pretending to work with my iBaby on the chair’s arm.

“Hello,” he says. And, before I dare ask him about his day or tell him about mine, I hand him the phone and explain my predicament.

My handy husband disrobes the phone in under a minute.  I feel even more incompetent than when I broke one of my short fingernails trying to unsheath it – it’s been a banner day for self-discovery.  Is it too early to drink? My iBaby is back and my world is restored. Now, if only the son-of-a-bitch would stop playing our (must everything be community property?) favorite word game and give me back my fucking iPhone all would be right again in my world. My iPhone, so close, yet so very far away.