Cell Phones and 70s Television Medicine - by Douglas

Anyone who grew up watching the likes of Charlie’s Angels and MASH knows that there is one surefire cure for amnesia – a judo chop to the base of the skull. I don’t remember specific shows or episodes but I do seem to remember a good number of 70's TV moments involving people with amnesia who were miraculously cured when they received a goodish whack on the coconut.

Patient – Doctor I can’t remember anything! My name, my address! Nothing!
Nurse – (Putting hands on knees and squeezing shoulders together to better accentuate her cleavage) What are we going to do, doctah?
Doctor – (Picking up ball peen hammer then, thinking better of it, picking up a two by four) Not to worry. If you survive the crushing impact to your skull, you’ll be sleeping in your own bed with your wife tonight.
Patient – I have a wife?
(Sickening crunch of skull bone)

What have we learned? No one uses leeches any more! It’s all blunt force trauma these days! I mean, read The New England Journal of Medicine once in a while!



So, remembering this important lesson from my youth, I applied the exact same logic accidentally to my cell phone. Several days ago I dropped it and it quit working. What it actually did was switch to the mode where it thought I had a Bluetooth thingy connected to it. So, if I answered a phone call, I couldn’t hear them and they couldn't hear me. I could still use it for text messaging but my giant middle-aged thumbs are better suited for chiseling notes into rocks and tying them to the legs of pterodactyls then sending them on their way.

This went on for the past several days with me knowing that I would soon find myself in the cell phone store buying a new phone. For me, this is barely preferable to finding myself in Indiana Jones’ snake pit with a pissy boa constrictor wrapped around each testicle and a rattler dangling toothily between them.

Then something weird happened. No, not the thing where I sleepwalked next door and licked my neighbor on his bald spot while chanting, “Freckles, freckles, freckles…” But that was weird. What happened was, I dropped my phone again. I never drop my phone, and here I’ve done it twice in the span of a week. Then, when I inspected it for damage I saw that the little Bluetooth symbol was now turned off. I called my wife and we heard each other talking. I was like Helen Keller with her hand under the water.

So, short story long, I’m pretty sure I’m a faith healer now. I’m testing my theory a little later with the gimpy lady who works on the fourth floor. I haven’t figured out how to lay my hands on her without getting HR involved but when has that stopped me before?