Misadventures in technology land

Ah, technology. I do so love it. But I am, in the words of that master of the English language, Bugs Bunny, a maroon. In fact, he might go so far as to say I am an ultramaroon. Not only can I not manage what little technology I have within my grasp, I can't manage to keep my mouth shut about it when I do screw up.

Picture it. (No, not Sicily.) I'm leaving a meeting. I climb into my car, don my cell phone headset, connect it to my cell and dial a friend's number. I get her voice mail. I leave my usual clever, witty and erudite message. Something along the lines of, "Hi you, it's me." (See? Always with the clever. And the witty. We'll get to the erudite later.) I continue to tell her that we're finished the meeting, we're heading to the pub for supper and would she like to join us. I then end the call.

Or so I think.

I drive out of the parking lot, encounter another meeting attendee, who flags me down, we have a brief conversation, it concludes, I drive away, turn on the car CD player, mumble some vaguely road rage-ish comment at some prat or other... and then my cell lets out a "Beep!"

Now. My cell is nothing if not informative whilst in headset mode. When a call comes in, you hear the headset go "live," there are two beeps, and the phone rings twice before automatically answering the call. Very nice arrangement. It gives you time to turn down any music, stop singing loudly off-key, stop swearing at the other drivers - whatever you might be doing that you might not want to broadcast via satellite to whomever is calling. Notice I said two beeps. Today I heard one beep, then nothing. "Hmmm..." thought I to myself. "That's different." Then I heard the lovely voice of the voice mail lady say, "Your message has finished recording. If you would like to listen to the message, press 1... " and she proceeded to give me several options.

It was then I realized that not only had I recorded the message I intended my friend to hear, but also everything that had transpired for 3 or 4 minutes after that. It was nothing I wouldn't have wanted her to hear, except possibly the sweary bits at other drivers, although come to think of it, I wouldn't even care about that because she knows more swear words than you and me put together - and I mean ALL of you - but I still would have felt a bit foolish had I sent her a voice mail message that included about 4 minutes of obviously not intentional content. I mean, just how stunned am I?

One of the options offered, thanks be to all the gods of compassion, was to delete the message and start again. I erased it and left a second message which said what I had intended to tell her. I was about to get away with it scott free. And then I did it. I switched to maroon mode and told her about the message I erased. And now I've told you. So I think I got away with that one pretty neatly, don't you?

What a maroon. In fact, an ultramaroon.