HEY SIRI!
By Heather Montanye
I’m walking on the beach when I notice an iPhone buried in soft sand lying in the sun. I pick it up—it’s hot!—and I ask the first person I see what I should do with it. He says take it to the police station. I think, “That’s a black hole.” So I ask two other people. They say, “Ask Siri.” I don’t own an iPhone, they don’t have much more detail, so I move on. I ask some groups I see if it’s theirs. Nothing.
I go home and Google it. Google says if the phone is locked—which this one is—you actually can ask Siri whose phone it is. I do that. Siri says, “I don’t know whose phone this is, and I don’t know who you are.”
I think, “Siri, you don’t know who I am? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?”
Anyway, Google says ask Siri to “Call Mom, call Dad, call my husband, call my wife.” I do that. Nothing. No contacts for those people. I decide to just start asking Siri to call common names like Mary.
Siri asks, “Call Aunt Mary?”
“Yes, Siri!”
“Call Jane?”
“YES, SIRI!”
I leave messages for all the common-named people who might be in this iPhone owner’s contact list, and before long one actually calls me back! It’s Jane! She’s a missionary in Germany! Holy cow! And she knows exactly whose phone it is and has his mother’s phone number!
I call Mom and she immediately gives the phone to her son, the iPhone loser, who happens to be at her house. I tell him I have his phone, which makes this dude’s day.
I drive it over to him and we have a long chat. Turns out that even though I don’t own an iPhone, I now know more about them than this poor guy does. I ask him one last thing: “Why doesn’t Mom show up in your contact list?”
“Cause when I typed it in, I accidentally typed mommom, and I never changed it.”
As they say in the South, “Bless his heart.”
***
Heather Montanye is retired after working 35 years for various nonprofits. She spends most of her time on the beach and trying to make sure Trump doesn’t get elected again.
