To borrow/quote/steal from many, most recently “Guy Patterson” (played by Tom Everett Scott in That Thing You Do which I recently saw again on tv and marked as one of my feel-good movies of all time, I AM Spartacus! I am, I really am.

I achieved greatness. I made it happen. I am proud, triumphant and bold.

I got my cell phone to accept incoming calls.

You laugh. You don’t know the anguish, the agonies, the hassles, the frustrations that I have dealt with for a year now. I’ve had the phone for like two years, but only when I desired it last year at LCC, when as chair of the damn convention it struck me as a good idea to be reachable by phone, that I found, to my consternation, that I never got any incoming calls. Yes, I had it set to silent, but the damn thing makes noise when it wants to, beeping, chirping and trilling like a demented wren at times. I never didn’t want incoming calls. It just somehow decided that I was not worthy. Or you weren’t. I’m not sure.

Ten years previously, at LCC in 1997 I had a beeper. It was appropriate technology at the time and I’m sure I’ve bored you senseless with my happy story about how it never beeped until Sunday afternoon (the beeper company wanted to know when I was going to return the equipment I’d borrowed). My mom sent me this cell phone (which in case you wonder why I have an 860 area code, that’s the outskirts of Hartford, CT where mom lives and can no longer use 203) and it’s useful for outgoing calls. As I learned last week when I %(*%^*!*%”&$ left it home when the scooter batteries died on me. Happily, I remembered that 99.999999 percent of the country – okay, at least in Seattle – has cell phones, I was able to get help from the first person who walked by and who was very kind and who actually had the number I needed memorized. But it’s a gadget I need now.

Last week in Denver, I was aided by Ed the Cab Driver who picked me up at DIA and wanted to ensure I got BACK to DIA on Sunday when my trip was originally at 7 am. He gave me his cell phone number and I gave him my name but try though he might, even he could not free up the incoming call deal on my cell phone. So when he called me, and then I called him (on the cell phone since hotel phone charges are ridiculous) and we got cut off, he could not call me back as incoming calls were indeed restricted.

Today I decided to try and fix this. It sounds simple. It’s not. The manual for this very simple cell phone, which is very very basic and only does phone stuff (ok, apparently I can text message but why would I want to?) does not have any logic. In the index, you cannot look under “a” for “Answering calls”. You cannot find “restricting calls” under “r”. You cannot, essentially find anything in the index by using any form of logic. It’s like someone wrote a 153 page book about, oh, bananas, and then in the index, the only entry is under “B” for “bananas”, see pages 1 – 153. The index is useless. The instruction book is 99.999999 percent useless as well. The information I needed on how to answer the phone (I know it sounds awfully stupid of me, but if you saw the simple faceplate of this phone, you might not know either, since it’s not obvious. The way to answer a call is to hit the “send” button.) is on page 37. Yeah, see?

So it took menu after menu, choice after choice after choice, until I finally found the part of the damn phone under something like “security” and then kept going and going to find “restrictions” and THEN find “incoming”. And still had trouble going from “yes” to “no” but I did it. Me. Personally. I fixed the phone that to date, 5 people more familiar with cell phones and technology had tried to fix. They didn’t have the manual, it’s true, but trust me, this manual is better used to shore up an uneven table than to help you work your cell phone.

But I called Stu and work and asked him to call me. I then had to call him back and ask him to try again because the first time I didn’t know how to answer the phone call (oh sigh, oh duh) but the second time, calloo, callay, oh frabjous day, the incoming phone call came in.

I AM SPARTACUS.