My iPhone recently started doing some strange stuff. It began with minor glitches, easily curable with a shutdown and reboot. This resolved things like my browser getting
I woke up to a constant dinging next to my head where my phone was charging on my nightstand. It was adding appointments to the shared calendar with my husband – one after the other. It sent us a slew of reminders about an upcoming date night at a restaurant, frantically copying our restaurant reservation we had for three weeks away and urgently requesting us to acknowledge it at 4 AM. Was it worried about us? Like, “Hey, you two. You might have a toddler but unless you go on a date soon, you’ll definitely drift apart. Get that babysitter. Marriage is a work in progress. Reminder. Get on it. Reminder. Your relationship is going to fall apart if you don’t acknowledge this date night coming up.”
The reminders glitch was followed by an all-out laser light show when I attempted to take a 6 AM shower before work a couple days later. I had plugged it back into the wall to charge while I headed for the bathroom. The light feature on my phone went off intermittently. It flashed into our darkened, early morning bedroom ceiling, sending our dog into a barking frenzy and waking up my husband and our sleeping baby.
I immediately updated the software on the phone. Switched the whole thing off, then on again.
This must have really pissed it off.
My newly charged, rebooted iPhone was on a mission. First, it started taking flash photography of my very messy bedroom, judging my slobbish tendencies and giving me a literal view of my own failures to maintain an orderly Feng Shui master bedroom where anything romantic could take place. This is a photo it took at 2:30 AM on a Sunday night:
My phone was mocking me. It might as well have said, “Really? You’re too busy to put your bra away? Why is there a purse on the floor? And can you really not take the extra 2 seconds to close your dresser drawers?”
A couple uneventful weeks went by and my phone issues seemed to be resolved. They weren’t
I thought that I was having a dream about speaking to one of my ex-boyfriends. I rarely dream about ex boyfriends anymore, except in a regretful, “Why did I waste time for so long?” kind of way.
I heard this voice saying, “Hello? Stacey? Are you there?”
My eyes popped open and saw a dim light next to my head. I turned over to examine it more closely and saw that it was my phone screen, lit up, with an active FaceTime conversation taking place with my ex-boyfriend.
It was just before 6 AM on a Monday.
I did the mature thing and hung up immediately. What had just happened? Had I dialed him in my sleep? I don’t remember Facebook stalking him recently, so couldn’t have accidentally contacted him. Do I call back? Email? Apologize via text? Blame it on my toddler?
I shut the phone off and went to shower. When I turned the phone back on, there were no messages from my ex. I wondered if my phone had sent him a video of me waking up, seeing that he was on my phone screen and freaking out. I hadn’t seen him in several years, so the fact that I had FaceTimed was probably a tad surprising.
I woke up my husband to tell him what happened. He laughed and went back to bed.
You may wonder why I have an ex-boyfriend’s contact information plugged into my phone. We are old exes (like virtually from our pre-teen years), old friends and he’s happily married with kids (as am I). My husband is friendly with him too and we see him in large groups, every five years or so.
I’ve since taken the damn phone into the Apple genius bar doctors. What other inanimate objects require appointments with geniuses? The genius we met doesn’t believe me that the phone is willingly doing these things on its own, but I know better. Maybe I’ve been hacked. Maybe someone is playing a joke on me. I’m probably not cyber-stalking / contacting exes subconsciously. All of my software is updated. The battery looks fine. The genius suggests upgrading to a new phone. And cutting off all contact with my exes.
The morning after my FaceTiming snafu with the ex, I decided to come clean and got an immediate response:
I’m hoping that by texting an apology to my ex on my iPhone, it will stop attempting to sabotage my marriage. Maybe it’ll refrain from contacting my ex boyfriends if I acknowledge date night with my husband. Or if I clean up my side of the bedroom. Until then, I’m keeping an eye on it during the day and shutting it down completely at night. Siri can’t be trusted to be near her other Apple friends, so her new curfew is whenever my bedtime is. If she acts up again, I’ll take the genius advice of upgrading.