Return to the Genius Bar

Yesterday I dutifully lugged my i-mac desktop to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store for my 20 minute appointment that was supposed to determine why the computer would not sync with the phone. At 4:15 PM, I left the store only to return 15 minutes later with my laptop to see if that would sync. At 6:00 PM., I went back only to be told to return at 8:00; they were getting close. At 8:30 PM I left the store with my two computers and went home.

Somewhere along the way, I managed to lose my i-phone (this was not a good day all around), made about ten new friends, earned new respect for the geniuses behind the bar and at the helm of Apple and moaned, cursed and cried about the technology that is supposed to hold all the pieces of my life together and was suddenly falling apart before my eyes, through no fault of my own.

There is indeed safety in numbers and the assorted other technology challenged bearers of laptops, i-pods, desktops and i-phones who came and went through the day for their scheduled appointments became my instant comrades, bemoaning my situation even as they rectified theirs. There were many dead or dying hard drives, some simple connection issues, one set of headphones that mysteriously worked in the store but not at home; a replacement for the i-pod that only played in one ear and yes, the ongoing case of my missing phone--which had mysteriously vanished somewhere between my car and the Apple store.

In the face of it all, the on-call geniuses (I actually went through 4 of them) were calm, understanding, helpful, supportive and never once condescending. They resurrected the files of the harried high school college advisor who had misplaced 70 of her advisees' college applications that mysteriously vanished when she tried to install a software update. They restored the files of a woman whose backup drive had quit, mid-backup. They even fixed my issues, patiently transferring data from one computer to the next until they could find the source of the problem.

And so I have wonderfully, clean well-functioning machines but no phone with which to test their new found powers.

One would think, said John, my new best friend, Genius Number 4, that if someone found it in this holiday season, they would call one of the numbers on it and try and track you down. Just the same, advised Andy, Genius Number 3, call AT&T and suspend your service in case they decided to call Nigeria.

So I'm holding out for another day-- feeling naked, missing an appendage and longing for my wonderful phone that did indeed change my life--once for the better and perhaps now, for the worse.