My husband lost his cell phone.

I think he did it on purpose.

You see, many years ago, I was being a good wife and cleaning up our patio table when I accidentally tossed his cell into a bon fire along with a handful of actual garbage. I realized exactly what I had done the moment my hand opened and the phone went flying into the air. I desperately reached out to try and grab it before that sucker landed into the leaping flames of fire, fueled into a raging inferno with a little gas. (My husband can’t start a fire by rubbing two sticks together if his life depended on it. He needs help. Preferably help from which ever large amounts of flammable liquid we happen to have lying around our yard, and preferably when I’m not standing near so as to retain my eyebrows.)

(Because oh yes, more than once he’s burned these f*ckers off.)

It took but a nano second for Boo’s phone to dissolve into a puddle of plastic goo. By the time I was able to safely fish out the remnants from the ashes, all that remained was a melted piece of metal barely bigger than a quarter.

My husband was less than amused. I kinda was. It was a draw.

From that moment on, my husband has made it his personal mission to always buy the most expensive, newest piece of cell phone technology he can get his grubby paws on. Just to rub my nose in the fact that he has it and I don’t.

A grown man going ‘Neener Neener’ is not nearly as sexy as one would think it is.

What makes my husband’s obsession with cell phone technology more annoying is he doesn’t make use of most features his phone is capable of. Sure, he answers the phone and has been known to breathe heavy on the line for me now and then, but that’s about it. He doesn’t text, he doesn’t take pictures, he doesn’t tweet, heck the man doesn’t even have a facebook account.

He uses his phone to simply talk on. How old school is that? In his defence, because I love him and he feeds me so clearly I don’t want to get on his bad side here, they make cell phones so itty bitty tiny these days that only a toddler can press the buttons with any accuracy. My husband has been blessed with, well big fingers.

Ham hocks actually. His hands are quite literally as big or bigger than bigger plates. He’s freakish that way. When he makes a fist it’s as big as my head. When you have ridiculously big fingers it makes the task of pressing ridiculously small keys that much more comical.

So while he likes the idea of phones that do everything for you short of wiping your bottom, he is hampered by his physical inability to make them work because of his sausage fingers.

Meanwhile, I covet this technology for myself and my lithe little fingers and am stuck with an ancient blackberry which takes fuzzy pictures and freezes on me every two minutes while I wait for my contract to expire so that I can pick up the newest toy.

Clearly I need to start losing my phone as often as he does.

Since Boo has lost yet another cell in a long line of burned, run over, dropped or drooled on phones, he has set his eyes on the coveted iPhone. An iPhone. The blogger’s phone of choice. My husband, the non-blogger, who I’m sure only wants the phone so he can waggle it in my face and say “no touchy touchy Tanis!”

I refuse to be bested by this beast. So I did what any smart woman who would have to pay full retail price to get a new phone thanks to contract law, and ran out to buy an iTouch. The poor man’s cousin to the iPhone.

My delusional thinking was along the lines of, well, I’ll buy this and see what the hype is about. And if I don’t like it I’ll give it to my kids to ruin.

I was so excited to get my shiny new toy. My kids were howling with jealousy and my husband (although I couldn’t see him) was rolling his eyes at my crooked logic. I may not be able to afford the iPhone right now, but dammit, I can have it’s cheaper, non-phone version.

(So I’m a sheep. I want what all the cool kids have.) Baaaaaaa.

Turns out? The apps that never end are pretty cool.

Also, turns out my fingers are not as lithe as I thought they were and I can’t type on the damn thing for the life of me. I type dog and it comes out hog.

I’m so frustrated with this itty bitty piece of shiny new Apple technology I want to hurl it across my house. What’s the point of making virtual keys so little you need a toothpick or a dead hobo’s finger to be able to use it?

All that hype about the iPhone? I’m pretty sure was propelled by a horde of leprechauns. Because obviously they are the only ones with fingers small enough to use the damn thing.

Then there is the small fact I’m aging (as my beaver tail boobs like to flap about and remind me every day) that I can’t actually see any of the text on the screen. Oh sure, I know you can adjust the settings to make the text bigger so the visually challenged, geriatric set such as myself can see the dirty text your best friend just sent you, but once again, that requires small fingers to do so.

At one point last night, I was caught staring at my children’s fingers and wondering if they actually needed ten full digits. Visions of one wee finger on a key ring kept running through my mind.

Suffice it to say, my children are now giving me the stink eye while keeping their hands firmly shoved in their pockets.

I’ll keep the iTouch, if only to wave it in front of my children and tease, “no touchy touchy kids!” but the idea of actually going the next step and buying the over-achieving iPhone have been dashed. Right about the same time I lost a game of Tetris because my fat finger slipped.

What I am not going to do, however, is tell my husband how annoying the touch screen is for anyone who possesses regular sized digits let alone those with elephant-sized fingers.

I’m a bitter, cranky wife. And nothing will amuse my blackened little heart more than watching my husband try and fumble with the keypad.

I’m also a gal who is more old school than she once thought. Turns out, I’ll take my worn out old crackberry with it’s keypad full of actual buttons over the sleek and shiny and utterly annoying iPhone anyday.

Now, get off my lawn. (She says as she shakes her cane at every one with small fingers and iPhones.)