Starting Young

I trooped into the mall today, with my shattered phone. My first inclination when I walk into this place is to turn around and walk back out again, but I soldiered on past the chair massage places, the iPhone cover kiosks, the sunglass stand, and a guy who repaired iPhone screens. Making a mental note, I marched on to the Apple store, where I was told I could have an appointment at the Genius Bar in half an hour.

Trolling the teeny bopper stores was not an option, so I went back to the guy who said he repaired iPhone screens. Hampered by the lack of a common language and a general distrust of people who work out of kiosks in malls, I think what the man told me was that it would be $250 to replace the screen on my phone.

Back in the Apple Store, my genius, Calvin, told me that screens on the iPhone 5s cannot be replaced because of the fingerprint security feature. When I griped that it never worked very well anyway, he said all I needed to do was download the latest software updates and it would work much better. I didn't bother telling him that I get requests to download new software at least once a week. He probably already knows that. (Talking to people in the Apple Store is like talking to employees in Disneyland. They are relentlessly cheerful).

While I waited for Calvin to transfer all my data into the new phone (which appeared on my emailed receipt as "work authorization and service") I watched the usual organized chaos taking place in the store with blue T-shirted Apple cadres, but it was the very young boy and his father who caught my eye. They both seemed enthralled by whatever device they were playing with.

Calvin disappeared as soon as he had me sign the "work order" on his iPad with my finger, but a nerdy young man called Zak helped me with a bombproof case and screen protector. As soon as I had signed his iPad with my finger, he told me to wait until the data had finished reloading to make sure the fingerprint function worked and went away. When I began to realize how long it was going to take to download all the photos in there, I tracked down Zak, and he reset the fingerprint function.

When I finally left, the little boy and his father, like graven images, were still there….