Ma Bell

I'm one of those people who has the sound of an old fashioned telephone as my ring tone on my cell phone (mobile? smart phone? magic phone?). I knew if I had anything else I'd be one of those people who never notices that their phone is ringing.
Despite having a recognizable tone I still don't always answer my phone when it rings. I don't feel comfortable answering it or even looking to see who it is if I am in the middle of a live conversation. I also won't answer while I'm at work or at the library or if I'm at home and the phone is in my coat pocket in the closet while I'm upstairs or outside.
For the record I am also old and crotchety enough to think it is rude to text message while you are having a live experience with a living breathing human being right in front of you.

For the most part it works out fine. People leave a message and I call them back when I am free. The only problem was that my husband sometimes need to get in touch with me in real time and I wouldn't notice his call until an hour or so later. I remedied this problem by making a special ring tone just for his calls. I used a little techno riff that came with the phone since my husband likes that kind of music and it would remind me of him. It's got a spy-movie-theme-song vibe to it.

The first time it "rang" I was in the grocery store with my daughter. We were in the toothbrush aisle. At first, I thought the sound was coming from the store's piped in music. I realised this wasn't the case when the familiar voice of Jimmy Buffett told me that he was. "wasting away again in Margaritaville". Then I thought it was the toothbrushes, you know the kind that play music while you brush. I finally noticed that it was coming from the shopping cart. I was starting to get a little freaked out because I couldn't see any products in the cart that could possibly be making music. Surely a musical device in the packaging of the frozen peas or the pudding pops wouldn't be able to withstand the extreme temperature and moisture conditions of a supermarket freezer.

I stuck my head all the way in the cart and doing my best not to sound crazy I whispered to my eight-year-old, "Can you hear that music?".
She looked at me with a casual expression and said, "I think that's your phone".