I wrote this when we talked Chuck into switching to an iPhone about five years ago. Here’s what happened.

For the longest time I was after my husband to switch from a Blackberry to an iPhone. The Result? Well?  Oh dear!  What was I thinking?

We told Chuck that his cell phone was a dinosaur.  I tired of him handing me his Blackberry every time he ran into a jam.  Such a long since I owned one, I couldn’t remember the procedures anymore.  I got frustrated.

Also, Chuck loved all my apps.  He hogged my cell, especially when we were traveling.  He loved that he could get his college football team’s games no matter where we were.  And he lusted after my cell, but not enough to make the change to the iPhone.

Well, all that changed just before the Christmas holidays.  After a year of nagging, he got his new iPhone 5s, and the real trouble began.

He didn’t like the keyboard.  He had trouble answering the phone.  Half the time he handed it to me to answer, even when I was driving.  He couldn’t tell if it was charging.  He couldn’t close his apps.   At one point he even complained about an app and finally said that his Blackberry could do a better job.  I reminded him that his Blackberry didn’t have apps or the ability to do it at all.

And don’t get me started about misbehaving apps, of which there seems to be a few since all the app providers hadn’t upgraded their apps to operate with the iOS 7.  Thank goodness for young people.  One of them finally showed me how to do something as simple as killing an app using the iOS 7.  Can you tell that I never upgraded my 4s to the iOS 7? I’m no Spring chicken, and as you can tell I had problems of my own.  I’m a bit of a dinosaur myself.

Chuck kept forgetting to turn his cell off, and many times he forgot to hang up the call.  Several colleagues told me that they could still hear him talking over the sounds in the background. I hope he didn’t give away any trade secrets!

He pocket dialed more than half the people in his office, numerous times; and our kids got so many pocket calls that it was a running family joke.   My daughter Jamie said that one day while she was in a meeting she had to turn her iPhone off, because he kept pocket dialing her.  The vibrate was running down her phone battery.

And Siri?

I asked, “Have you used Siri yet?”  Chuck said, “No” looking confused. I said, “Do you know what it is?”  He said, “No.”  I said, “Ok, that’s good.”

Why bother?

After getting his new iPhone, it was literally weeks of whining and fussing. Chuck was driving me crazy!

At one point he asked me if I thought it was waterproof.  Waterproof?  He told me that he wanted to drop it in the toilet to find out.  I kept my mouth shut, and silently hoped he would.

Plus, Chuck loses everything and drops things.  This is the same man who dropped his IPad three floors down on to an atrium with marble floors.  They’re probably still talking about that in the Capitol. It is a wonder his new iPhone still had its screen intact.

And then, the ultimate.  One of his elderly friends said to Chuck, “Whatever you do, don’t upgrade it to an iOS 7.”  Oh boy!  We had already done that, and his sweet blond secretary told him so.

The complaining had just about stopped, when this set him off again.  We listened to several more weeks of complaining about how the upgrade was why his iPhone was so difficult to use.

Maybe for me, but certainly not for him.  When in doubt, he just hands it to me!

We tried to explain that he never had the earlier operating system, and that his friend probably upgraded a 4 or 4s to the iOS 7.  And that he really doesn’t have anything in which to compare.  We may as well have been speaking Greek!  He said, “What?”

(Big eye roll here.)

Remember how I told him that his Blackberry was a dinosaur?  Well, I kind of forgot that Chuck is, too.  We just gave a new kitten to a dinosaur.  What was I thinking?  All he really wanted was something in which to answer the phone and occasionally send a very short email.

Several times during those days, I thought to myself, “Dear Lord, just kill me now!” But of course, this too passed.