I’ve been dreading Christmas. Usually I love Christmas, but this year my husband is off working on a ship and I am spending Christmas alone with my parents. To me this sounded like a recipe for disaster. Not because I hate my parents, but because my hometown is boring and my mom and I rub each other the wrong way, and no one else would be there to be a buffer.

But as I was sitting in the back seat of my grandparents’ car on the way home with everyone last night, a wonderful moment happened. I should say a hilarious moment happened. Suddenly two really obnoxious ringtones started going off simultaneously.  One was very obviously coming from my grandfather’s pocket, and the other was coming from the car itself. Everyone except my grandpa started reacting because it was way, way too loud. We all look at him and say “grandpa that’s your phone.”  “No, no” he says, “That’s the car phone, you have to pick it up on the car” he says to my dad. “Well, which button do I press?” My dad asks. “The one on the console” he says. “Dad, there’s more than one button on the console, why don’t you just answer your phone to stop it.” “My phone is not going off, it’s the car phone.” “It’s the same phone grandpa, pick up your phone please so this awful noise can stop.” “But my phone isn’t going off, I don’t hear it.” “Yes it is grandpa, we can all hear it.” Then suddenly the noise stops. Finally the person hung up.

As we all start rolling our eyes, my grandpa finally pulls his iPhone out of his pocket (whichever salesman decided it was totally fine to give an 80 year old an iPhone needs to come talk to me so I can knock some sense into him). “Did I miss it?” he asks innocently. I take his phone and examine it for him. “Grandpa you have six unheard voicemails”. “I can get voicemails?” He asks, so innocently. “How do I see them?” We then proceed to go through his voicemails one by one and I quickly realize he hasn’t checked his messages in months because we find an unheard message from the beginning of October. Then my parents start lecturing him about how important it is to check these because he is going to miss something important, as is evident from the several missed messages from his doctor.

Old people and technology. As I sat in the car silently laughing to myself I realized my holiday had already been made.  This is a memory I will cherish for many years to come.  Merry Christmas everyone!