Chaos Has Entered the Group Chat

Well, the other day I finally bit the bullet and installed the update my iPhone has been nagging me about it, and almost immediately regretted it. I’m old, and I don’t like change, and apparently someone at Apple thought it would be helpful if we now had to go through more steps to do things like close out a website tab. Also from what I can tell this latest update is all about aesthetics at the expense of practicality. So, now when I’m doing something like filling out a pop-up form on a website I can kind of sort of see the website shining through from underneath. I mean I guess it looks pretty as long as you ignore the fact that it makes what you are trying to do more difficult.

All this is to say I am definitely not picking on anyone for phone blunders, but also Saturday morning was entertaining. I got a text from my mom in a group chat that I’m in that includes my mom and my sister and some other people I am most likely related to. I say this because these are not numbers I have saved in my phone contacts, but since they all have 207 area codes (that’s Maine in case you were wondering) I assume that they are probably some of my cousins and one of my aunts. The problem was this text was not meant to go to this group. But there are no take backs in texting so Mom just corrected her error by sending the same text to the text chat that is our immediate family. This was good because we were the only ones who would understand the text.

In case you were wondering it was this photo:

Photo of a label from some grocery store fried chicken.

Let the record show this is a price/ingredients label from some supermarket fried chicken. The only text included with this photo was “Let the Olympic Games begin!” Makes perfect sense to me, but I’m guessing for you and some of the folks who received Mom’s first text it was a real head-scratcher. For the record, our immediate family had a tradition when the Olympics were on TV of picking up some KFC and eating it while watching the games.

So inevitably Saturday morning after staring for a long time at that picture mom sent trying to riddle out what exactly was going on, one of my relatives (keep in mind I have no idea who because to me it’s just some random 207 number) admits they are completely stumped. Probably they are wondering if their aunt or sister-in-law has finally lost her marbles. I send back an explanation that this text got sent to to the wrong group chat to try and clear things up and gave a brief explanation of the KFC tradition.

Meanwhile as the wind is howling outside I’m in the middle of another text message conversation about garbage cans with Ron’s dad. It takes a couple of texts for me to learn that our garbage can has blown across the street. So, I get bundled up and head out to retrieve it. Perhaps because of mishaps like Mom’s fried chicken photo, Ron’s dad does not believe in group texts. Instead he will send the same text to both me and Ron separately. Well sometimes. Sometimes he just sends the message to one of us, but we never know what the case is. So, we have to confirm with each other whether we’ve both received the message or not. It keeps us on our toes.

Anyway, that was not the end of the weekend’s phone drama. Very early on Sunday morning my mom called my sister. Except my sister was still asleep so she missed the call. She tried calling mom back when she got up, but it went to voicemail. Then she tried again a little while later with the same result. She tried sending a text, but it showed as delivered but not read. So now a few hours after that missed call my sister texted me to ask if I had any insight. I didn’t, but I did some sleuthing (checked Mom’s Facebook.) Both of my parents are prolific Facebook users and I did see that two hours ago Mom had posted photos from an event held the previous evening in their community and three hours ago she had shared her Connections score. So probably everything was good.

Still I decided it couldn’t hurt to send a text to the family chat. It was not about fried chicken. My dad responded right away. So, clearly he was fine and well, but there was still nothing from my mom. I showered and got ready, but when I checked my phone later and there was still no response from Mom that was concerning. What if she injured herself while out for her daily walk? What if she was eaten by an alligator? These were legitimate concerns, but thankfully, as it turned out, unfounded. My sister got a hold of my dad and learned that mom was busy at a charity walk and had just texted that she was heading out to eat with her friends. As for that early morning call to my sister, I assume that was a mistake.

It was not the only accidental call of the week. Earlier in the week a friend had accidentally dialed my dad’s number while scrolling through her phone. She ended the call right away. Later that morning dad was on his phone and noticed the missed call, but dad didn’t have her number saved in his phone. So, he assumed it must be some sort of scam. (Perhaps we have the seniors a little too scared of phone scams.) For reasons known only to my dad he decided to call back this scammer and give them a piece of his mind. Before she could get a word in edgewise she was treated to an angry man calling her a scammer and telling her not to call his number. When he paused his ranting she explained who it was and that the call was a mistake, and in a modern-day version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dad was suddenly kind and friendly and asked her how she was doing.

So, let this be a word of advice, if you get a strange text of a photo of the ingredients label on some fried chicken or a call you don’t recognize, fear not, it may not be the work of scammers but just someone struggling to make sense of their latest phone operating system update.