My Cellphone Got Run Over by a Bus

I know, you're thinking I'm behaving like the yellow press, stooping to any eye-catching headline just to grab up some readers. But it isn't true. Or rather, the headline is true. Some sinister force is at work, trying to keep me disconnected from our over-connected world. After leaving the mobile telephone in Germany on my recent trip there and going phoneless for a good ten days while the antiquated snail-mail system struggled with international delivery, it finally arrived some time last week. But reunification was short-lived. Yesterday I drove up to Court St. to buy some mat-board and managed in my prematurely senile way to set the phone on the hood of the truck while wrestling the 32 X 40" sheet into the cab. Then I drove off. Because the large sheet of card risked damage from the stick-shift I drove cautiously down the hill. So cautiously that it was only some twelve blocks later, on the cobblestone stretch beyond the BQE, near the garbage transfer station, that I heard through the open window the thunk of an object falling from my truck onto the pavement. In a flash the thought entered my mind: PHONE! I rounded the corner onto Lorraine and pulled over onto the sidewalk, already looking back over my shoulder. Turning off the truck, I jumped out just in time to watch a school bus lumbering down the street. I could clearly see the phone, nestled in a little divot in the cobblestones. The front wheels of the bus missed the phone by inches. I hastened towards the corner, but the rear wheels of the mighty yellow behemoth scored a direct hit--the phone lifted up into the air after the wheel had passed, as if in the throes of a final, mortal vibration. To my astonishment, once recouperated, the phone powered up again. I can still receive calls, but can't make any, as the keypad no longer functions. Don't send any text messages; at the moment I can't read them. On a positive note, the new and improved display has a beauty all its own, like the sheen of motor oil on a fresh rain puddle.