Frank's Musings

The enjoyable quiet of my i-phone’s ringing was an unanticipated consequence of the suspension of normal activities because of the pandemic  Or so I thought. 

My wife and I haven’t gone out at all frequently in over a year—not to theaters, not to concerts, not to work meetings, not to parties, not to stores.  Really only to doctors’ appointments.  That has meant that I have gotten out of the habit of muting my i-phone when in many of those locations.  As a consequence, I had also forgotten to check whether I have restored audibility to my i-phone’s ringer by looking at the little switch on its side.

Following an unusual silencing of the i-phone ringer in the last few months, I apparently forgot that I had to move the switch back to the “on” position after having turned the ringer off.  I didn’t notice that something was the matter with my i-phone until my daughter told me, through my wife, that recently I never seemed to answer her calls.   I did receive a few phone-mail messages from others.  I stopped getting constant spam and Chinese language nuisance calls.  That, of course, was a blessing.  However, it eventually dawned on me that there was something wrong on my end.  Repeated attempts to find how I might have set my phone to change all incoming calls to vibrate or silence instead of audible ringing were all fruitless. 

On her third attempt, however, my wife discovered that the mute switch on my i-phone’s edge was on.  In fact, I had forgotten that there even was such a switch! 

Now that my wife and I have received our second vaccination doses, we are looking forward to travelling, attending baseball games, concerts, movies, restaurants, etc. again.  Hopefully the next pandemic won’t occur during our lifetimes.  Whether it does or doesn’t, perhaps the world will have learned a few lessons from this one that will reduce the toll in human lives.  Someone may also figure out more quickly than I why his i-phone isn’t working right.