Young and In Love?

I had to go to the phone shop today.  I'm not fond of the phone shop, but then I suppose nobody is.  My mobile phone contract had expired and I was afraid that I'd be cut off without warning.

 

I was also afraid, as I stood in the inevitable queue, that they would give me a new phone and then charge me for it. I wanted a free phone.  It's a week to payday, and I'm having my usual trouble. There is no money for petrol or food, never mind fancy phones.

The girl who served me very quickly confirmed that the contract could be renewed on the spot, with a free phone.  I checked that it would be an iPhone. 

There's people who live far from my house who are extremely close to my heart, and I need to have a good long look at them on FaceTime at least once a week.  Some of these beloved people are small children and I have to keep physically seeing them to ensure they're still the same, and haven't turned into hairy six footers with deep voices and questionable girlfriends while I'm not looking. 
That's what usually happens when I take my eyes off children for any length of time.

So there we were.  She got me to sign a new contract, and gave me a phone.  Then she asked me if I knew my Apple password.  I would have sworn on His Nibs' life that I knew it.  She asked me if I wanted her to set everything up for me.
I don't imagine it's that difficult to set up an iPhone, especially when you're only updating from one model to another.  But it turned out her feet were killing her, and she wanted a chance to sit down at one of the little tables for a while.

She seemed like a nice girl. full of chat.  I love teenagers, so I was delighted to go along with it.

It goes without saying that I was wrong about knowing my password, so everything took much longer than it should have.  Again, this suited me, because I was about to learn fascinating things. 

She randomly asked me why I didn't want a Samsung phone.  Nobody had offered me a Samsung phone, but I didn't mention that. I told her why I need the iPhone, for FaceTime.

She informed me that she doesn't like Samsungs anyway, that she won one worth €700, and gave it away, to her friend Sam.

(Sam is not his real name, obviously.  She was just taking a little break, not offering me the chance to send her business into cyber space.  Also, I can't get over the fact that what looks to me like a perfectly normal phone costs €700, but that is not the point of this story).

Very generous.  Maybe I'd tell this tale to a few of my own friends, in case I was missing a trick.

Then she remembered to ask me if I wanted insurance, leading to a quick chat about iPhone  screens etc.  I brought up the sad tale of the tablet recently broken in flitters by the Boldest Dogs in Ireland.  "Aw, she said "how many dogs have you?"  Barely giving me a chance to answer, she said she had half a dog. 

You'd have to ask, wouldn't you? My imagination was running riot. 
"What do you mean, half a dog?"

"I own it with my friend Sam."

The dog lives with Sam, but they both own it, and she sees it every day.

A close friend indeed, I thought. 

She blathered on, as teenagers do, and told me that she was in Offaly for the weekend, with Sam.  They are now fighting, so unless they make friends, they might have to have a custody battle over the dog.

"Was it a big fight?"  I'm definitely getting nosier as I get older.

"It was stupid. He was driving to Offaly, and I was driving him mad, singing and giving him the wrong directions by mistake.  And he had no patience.  He told me that when we got to the hotel I should a nap, because I was so hyper.  And I told him to feck off, he's not the boss of me"

I assured her that all aspects of her story were familiar to me.  I'm constantly in the same kind of trouble with His Nibs when we're in the car.  The only difference is that I fall asleep the instant anyone suggests I take a nap, so things don't get so serious.

As she went on with her story, I lost my focus, thinking of the small details.  She gave Sam a valuable phone, they share a dog, they went to a hotel together.

"And then" she went on "when we got to the hotel, there was a double bed and a single bed in the room".

Oh.  Maybe they were just friends.

"So I said we should shove the two beds together, you know, for the laugh.  And so we'd have a massive bed."

No they weren't. 

"And so we did.  But then he slept on the very far edge of the single bed, sulking.  I may as well have been in the bed on me own."

I was bewildered.

I had already been informed that she's 18, he's 19, as part of the "You're not the boss of me" section of the story.

I also knew that they both lived with their parents, hence the timeshare dog.

What in the name of Christ has come over Ireland's 19 year old men, if they get to spend the night in a hotel with their girlfriend and avoid all touching because of a row in the car?

I thought that it wouldn't matter to two teenagers if they had beaten each other senseless in the car, that all rows would be forgotten at the door to the hotel room.

I couldn't wait for her to stop talking so that I could start questioning her, busybody that I am.

"Sam's not technically your friend, is he?  He's obviously your boyfriend."

"He's my friend."

"Your friend with benefits?"

"Jesus.  How old are you? (I had the grace to squirm) No, he's my friend."

"Your friend who you share hotel rooms and dogs with."

"That's right.  My friend."

This was fecking ridiculous.  If it was one of my nieces I could have roared at her
"Are you going off with him or aren't you?"
But this was supposed to be a simple business transaction, and the girl was a stranger.

I was trying to slow the phone's downloading with the power of my mind.  I had to know what was going on before I left the shop.

"And does Sam have other friends like you?"

"No.  He's my friend that's not allowed be friends with other girls.  In fact he's not allowed really know other girls.  Or breathe the same air as them."

"Right.  Why can't you just say that you're his girlfriend, and he's your boyfriend?"

So she explained it to me.  Apparently, if they gave themselves such titles, things would change.  They'd be invited to nights out as a couple, and there would be some sort of expectation, and people would be going on about the future, and moving in together and "When you get married" and so forth.  She is not prepared to be involved in such nonsense, so they're just friends.

"But sure what difference does it make?  Isn't it just words really?"

"No."

This caper has been going on for a year.  She told me they had a friend-iversary in March.  A friend-iversary.  For God's sake.

When my lovely nieces, both in their twenties now, were teenagers, I discovered from them that the dating world had become a difficult and complicated place.  You could be seeing someone, meeting someone, or dating someone, all before you were going out with them. 
I still don't know what the difference was. 

And all these terms now obsolete?  Because it seems we've gone one step further.  You don't see or date or meet or even go out with anyone.  You're friends with them.

His Nibs and I will have to stay together forever.  There is nothing on earth that could drag me into this world of mystery and trouble.

Can you imagine going off with some lovely lad on a Friday night (those were the days!) and having some nutty teenager jumping out of a hedge and shouting at you to take your paws off "her friend"? 

Can I just say, in the 90's, which is when I met His Nibs, things were a lot simpler.  You were either going out with someone or you weren't.  I don't remember any different levels of being someone's girlfriend.
His Nibs had loads of friends who were female.  To the best of my knowledge he wasn't going out with any of them.  In fact he still has loads of female friends.  I'd better find out what his definition of a friend is these days.

Anyway, while the phone was completing its business, I checked a couple of final things. 

I asked her if Sam thinks she's his friend or his girlfriend.  I thought it might just be her.

"His friend.  We have a deal."

And if he introduced her to someone as his girlfriend, what would she say?  She says she'd say "No I'm not, I'm his friend."

I pointed out that that would make Sam sound overly possessive of his friends, or possibly insane.  That's the price of breaking the deal, apparently.  It seems to be quite a formal arrangement.

So were they the other kind of friends before they became their current form of friends?  I thought maybe they'd ignored each other for years, then fallen on each other like savages, the way teenagers do.

No.  It seems he was a holy show when they were young (when the feck was that?  She's 18 now!), but then she met him in a pub just over a year ago, and he'd gotten good looking.  And he'd got his teeth sorted out (I didn't ask, for a change).  So she decided to be "friends" with him.

I was fascinated by the whole business.  I've never had a better time in a phone shop.