I lost my cell phone a week ago. It hadn’t turned up, so I officially declared it lost. In dire need of a replacement, I headed to the Cingular store in the mall to get a new one. Unfortunately, I was only 10 months into a 24 month contract; I was ineligable for an upgraded phone. The woman who helped me, obviously driven by a commission, started pointing out the various phones and their $200+ price tags. Depressed, I left the store vowing to ransack the house a few more times before laying down that kind of green.

My phone didn’t turn up.

With boys in tow I headed back to the mall. After an endless wait (during which my youngest learned how to make paper airplanes and the older used every cell in the store to call and leave a message at home), I finally got my turn to talk to the only guy working the store. His suggestion was this: Buy a Cingular pay-as-you-go phone from Walmart, bring it in and they would put in a new SIMM card. It would be just like new.

The new phone cost me $30 and Cingular put in the SIMM for free. At $3.99 a month for phone insurance, I’ve already saved myself $10 over the life of this contract. Sure I have a crappy phone with no features, but who needs a fancy phone with a lousy camera, anyway?

My wife has been in New York this week for business. While we miss her terribly, there is one little perk I was left with this week: I got to drive our new Toyota Avalon.

To convince her I could be trusted with her new car was an arduous task. There were training videos, simulators and waivers to sign. Assurances were made and above all the Golden Promise: “I promise to park far away from any other car to prevent door dings.” You simply can’t park next to some guy with a rusting Escort and a bad disposition and trust your door won’t get dented.

Now, with her out of town, and my general fear of all things stove, oven and spatula, there was no way I was going to cook dinner last night. After a lengthy and delicate negotiation with the kids (who knew there was such a difference in the grilled cheese sandwiches at different restaurants), we settled on a nice dinner at T.G.I. Fridays.

I pulled into the parking lot and found the most distant row without any other cars and parked. Our dinner went without incident, but as we trekked back across the windswept parking lot, I saw a few other cars in our row. Fear swept over me momentarily, but as we got closer I realized that both the new Caddilac and the new Corvette had kindly parked with an intervening stall between them and the Avalon. I sighed a breath of relief. Their wives must have had the same Golden Promise.

Best of all, I had started the “new car paranoia” parking row! I love being a trendsetter.

A cool anagram of my given name (John Edward Uhri) is JEDI WHO RUN HARD.

Cool.

A slightly less cool one is “Injured, how hard?”.

(via the Internet Anagram Server)