I was flipping through the channels on a Tuesday night in mid-October when I came across the start of "Hocus Pocus" on Freeform. I'd never seen the movie, it was Halloween season, and it was Bette Midler. Needless to say, I put down the remote.
I wanted to watch the movie without interruption — no calls, no texts. I casually tossed my iPhone onto my bed. I could have put the phone on a table. I could have put it underneath the couch cushion. I could have just turned it off. But instead, I chose to send it airborne across the room and toward the bed.
The phone landed three or four inches from the edge of the bed. And then it started to slip, and then it slipped a little more, and then it slipped a little more, until it teetered on the edge. And then ...
SPLAT!
My wife walked over to the phone and picked it up. She gasped. It was not a good gasp. It was a gasp that affirmed what I had already suspected, which was that I was a complete bozo for throwing the phone.
"How bad is it?" I asked, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the phone wasn't damaged.
She showed me the screen. It was shattered.
This was the first time I'd cracked an iPhone screen. I checked Apple's website to see how much it would cost to repair it. It was more than I was willing to pay ($129), so I searched online for iPhone repair shops and found one in my neighborhood that charges less than half that amount. I brought my phone there the next day and received a new screen later that week.
Since then ... since then my phone has acted very strangely. I wish I could show you the weird things I've seen with the phone since the screen was replaced. The phone has ...
... deleted complete sentences I've typed. Earlier this year a friend texted me with upsetting news. I can't remember what it was, but it required an immediate response. I typed, "I'm so sorry to hear that. Let me know if there's anything I can do." As soon as I finished writing the message, the cursor moved backward and erased it, character by character. I typed it all out again. The phone erased it all again. I had this back-and-forth with the phone for — no exaggeration — 15 minutes. The phone had no empathy for my friend whatsoever.
... placed calls on mute at random points in the conversation. Coincidentally or not, this has often happened while I was on the phone with my parents. The phone has also hung up on them on occasion. It is literally cutting me off from my family.
... moved apps without my even touching it. I've invested a lot of time — a lot of time — curating the apps on my phone and arranging them just the way I like it, so this glitch is beyond frustrating. I don't want the phone to drag Instagram four screens over; I want Instagram to remain where it is, on the first screen, next to Facebook and Twitter. The social media apps should be all together, obviously. It takes me a while to move Instagram back to its original spot. Ever try to move an app to another screen while making sure the other apps stay in place? It's kind of like Jenga, but much, much harder. You need to be extremely precise.
... opened the Venmo app on its own several times. This is my greatest concern with the phone. I'm not the type of person to transfer cash to friends as a spontaneous gesture, but my phone, on the other hand, is very receptive to the idea of giving away my money. If you haven't sent me a friend request on Venmo yet, now is the time.
The other week I broke down and I took the phone to an Apple store, explaining how I'd damaged the screen and had it replaced.
"Did you have it replaced in an Apple store?" I was asked.
"No, I brought it to a third-party repair store," I replied.
The employee shook her head. (She may have added a couple of tsks, too. I'm not certain.)
Her best suggestion was to restore the phone to its factory settings, which I did. When it restarted, I was asked to choose a language. I attempted to select English. The phone settled on Chinese.
So the problem with the phone persists. My guess: It's haunted. At the very least, there's some real hocus-pocus going on with the phone.
I can tell you this: I will never be tempted by a Bette Midler movie on cable again.
