Things I can’t think my way out of

So, dad washed his cell phone a few weeks ago. Then, instead of waiting for it to dry out, he immediately plugged it in, pretty much guaranteeing he would short its components out. (Cue arguing as I asked him to put it in rice and he refused.)

I wasn’t all that upset because up to that point I’d been spending about a half hour a week trying to figure out what happened when he pushed a button and couldn’t extract himself from whatever he’d done. He needs a simpler phone. On the other hand, I didn’t have time to replace it. He’s been frustrated that I didn’t have time to take him shopping, which is fair, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

So today is really one of the first days I have had to deal with any logistical thing that was going to take more than an hour. I’ve researched the two phones that make sense for dad — Jitterbug and Doro. I’ve found a store that has them both for comparison, which is five minutes away from us and opens at 10.

The damages to dad’s internal clock mean that anything that is happening at any time that is known should be happening immediately. So at 8 I told dad we could go look at phones today. Since then he’s been asking me literally every three minutes when we can leave. I know he can’t help this, but it’s part of a pattern that will now intensify since I’ll be home more — that I’m not doing things on his schedule or the way he prefers and he will just pick at me, bit by bit. Even if doing things on his schedule would result in us sitting in a parking lot for a half hour.

Every month when the media bills come (cell phone, landline / internet / cable), dad flips out about the amount. There’s an obvious solution to this, which is to automate the bill so he doesn’t see them, some of which I did this summer when I was busy, but that upsets him, too, because he can’t see them. So right now the bills are set to be paid automatically but to still come to the house so he can see them. Every month I explain the media bills to him and he says he understands, but then every month he’s angry at me, again.

Anyway, the most obvious thing to do is to change our cell service. I want him to get a simpler phone and I will switch my provider to the cable company, at least initially. This should save us something like $600 / year as the carrier I would like him to use is much, much cheaper than what we have.

So in the interstices where he’s not asking me if we can leave, he’s asking me why the bills are so much. I explain this every month and I will no doubt explain it again, but the answer is basically that he has a series of inflexible demands that conflict with the pricing structure of the communications providers– he wants to keep a landline, we have to keep the Internet service we have, and although it’s expensive, the cable service provides exactly what he wants, which is turning on a TV and watching live broadcast TV at will, plus the channels he can’t live without — GSN, History Channel, etc. He wanted a flip phone with no data, but his current carrier charges a flat rate for that, while they force me to pay an exorbitant amount for a little data because I have an elementary smart phone.

There’s no really good solution here — cutting the cord would mean he would have to learn to use a new remote and two new systems (digital antenna, plus Roku or whatever). His capacity to learn and follow directions is severely diminished. I already spend about another half hour a week reprogrammming the remote or debugging the cable box after he’s pushed a button and doesn’t know how to extract himself from whatever he’s done. At the same time, Internet TV would be a huge obstacle in terms of his severe impatience about everything.

So I decided to start with the phone. We’re about to the leave for the store. He keeps saying, if I get a new phone, don’t we need to get a new phone plan? I keep saying, yes, but your phone is broken so you need a new phone anyway, and we are leaving the Verizon plan for a cheaper option. He keeps saying, but I don’t see why we need a new plan.

Wish me luck.

~ by Servetus on May 22, 2019.