Grandpa Wendell and the Rebellious Phone
Grandpa Wendell received his first smartphone on his seventieth birthday, and the phone immediately decided that it knew better than he did. Every word he typed, it changed into something else.
On Monday, he texted his daughter, "I am bringing pies to dinner." The phone sent, "I am bringing pigs to dinner." His daughter wrote back in a panic, asking where she was supposed to put them, and Grandpa laughed so hard that he had to sit down.
On Tuesday, he told his neighbor, "See you at the duck pond." The phone sent, "See you at the dock pound." The neighbor spent an entire hour searching for a pound, a dock, and a puzzled lady who sold fish.
On Wednesday, his granddaughter Lena called. "Grandpa, you wrote that you are delighted to be a lemon. I think you meant a pilot?"
"I meant that I'm delighted to see the melon," said Grandpa.
Lena giggled. "Let's fix this together." She showed him how to read each message carefully before he sent it, and how to tap on any word that the phone had changed. She even turned off the feature that made the worst changes.
By Friday, the messages were clear, although Grandpa admitted that he missed some of the old ones. "The pigs were my best work," he said. Now he saved the strangest texts in a folder named Phone's Fault, and every holiday he read the funniest ones aloud.