If you keep your iPhone long enough, it will eventually need a new battery. We bought our iPhone 11s in very late 2019, so they are in their fourth year. The nearest Apple Store to us in in the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City.

Note: For the uninitiated, Pentagon City is neither a pentagon nor a city. It is a neighborhood in Arlington, VA. The Fashion Centre (note the “tre” at the end, very fashionable) is actually, well, a mall. A big one. One hundred sixty-four stores, to be precise. Most of them, by my rough count, cater primarily or exclusively to women, which seems fair.

In any case, we recently learned that both our phones needed new batteries. Since this happened two days ago, I do not remember how we discovered this troublesome fact. But I do recall that it was projected to cost $89 to replace the battery in each phone at the Apple Genius Bar. Such is the genius of the Apple business model.

So, we made an appointment for, Saturday, today, to have my phone’s battery replaced. When you do this, you are advised to back up the phone to iCloud lest all your data be erased. It took me so long to accomplish the backup (the phone is set to automatically back up but who trusts that?) that when I went to make a second appointment for my wife’s phone, the next appointment was in September (lie: but it was many hours later). We decided to wing it.

So, this morning arrived sunny and, unusually, with non-life-threatening air quality and off we went to the Fashion Centre at Pentagon Mall for my 10:30 am appointment.

To my surprise, and somewhat to my dismay, the mall was practically deserted. Many stores weren’t open yet and few visitors were present. Even the Apply Store, usually a beehive of activity, was quiet, with way more attending Apple staff than customers. We were early, usually a good omen.

A pleasant young man greeted us. I pushed my Apple Wallet app into his face, showing the QR code for my appointment. He pushed a larger square electronic pad device my way and asked, “you’re Paul?” “Yes,” I replied. He said his name was also Paul. Very pleasant. Punching many buttons on my phone and on his square electronic pad thing, he confirmed everything. We then broached the question of getting my wife’s phone attended to as well (I sheepishly explained why we couldn’t get her a separate appointment). More buttons pushed and, voila! he takes both phones. Mine will be ready at 11:45, hers at noon. I am shocked that a battery replacement could take this long, but they have you by the iPhone so what are you going to do? We head out into the mall, carrying our now-empty phone cases.

When my wife peels off into Nordstrom’s (“just to look around”), I realize for the first time that without our phones, we have no means of finding each other if we are separated. Since one of my wife’s many skills is shape-shifting whereby she can completely disappear in a store, even one organized into straight rows, I realize we must remain together at all costs.

You know where this is going. Victoria’s Secret, it happens, is having a sale. VicSec is a store I have no interest in visiting so I pace outside for what seems like a half-hour while my wife saves money. I pretend I am mall security in disguise. Time passes, slowly, very slowly. The store has three entrances along mall corridor. I can’t see my wife in any of them. She has shape-shifted into women’s undergarments.

Eventually, she emerges proudly holding up here pink bag (everything is pink now – Barbie, you know) with her goodies. It’s all fine. Through the magic of shopping mathematics, we have less money than before, but we have saved money.

So it goes. We wander the mall, stopping in stores because they’re there, killing time. I learn that Macy’s does not sell John Varvatos cologne, but the nice young lady persuades me to let her blast my forearm with Montblanc something. It’s not bad. How much? She tells me it comes with some other Montblanc product and includes a gift bag. I don’t want a gift bag. How much without the “package?” Same price. How much? $115. For how many bottles? One.

Er, I‘ll need to think about that. She’s, obviously conditioned to rejection, is fine with that. [Note: three hours later, my forearm still reeks of Montblanc]

Finally, after about a mile of walking, we re-enter the Apple Store, greeted again by Paul who reminds us we’re early. We know. I tell him we came back early to sit and look sad in hopes that it would speed up the return of our phones. He laughs. I tell him that I know he’s too young to remember a time when people like me left home with no phone and had to carry exact change to use a “public phone” in case an emergency arose. I tell him we used to be away all day without every using a phone or even thinking about one. He laughs, nods, laughs. I imagine at day’s end Paul going home to report to his mother and/or roommate, “you won’t believe what I had to put up with today.”

I tell Paul that I have not been away from my phone this long since 1983 and that I am going to need therapy. He laughs harder. We wait.

While we’re waiting, I engage a pleasant young woman in an Apple staff shirt about a question I have about iCloud: why I was told to back up my phone to the Cloud when I had once been told by AppleCare that, contrary to my belief, my computer was not backed up to iCloud, that iCloud was merely a device for synching your Apple devices and that backing up should be done with a separate device (Apple will see you one) using Time Machine. I tell her I have such a device that is backing up my iMac to Time Machine.

She explains about how I can have both an iCloud Drive and a separate set of document files that are in the Cloud but are not in the Cloud. And because the phone has less capacity than the iMac, well, you can see why …. I tell her I took metaphysics in college and this sound a lot like that. She laughs. She and Paul laugh a lot. They are very adept at concealing what must be their abiding sense of superiority over my generation. We part amiably as Paul interrupts to report that our phones are coming out.

My wife notes that her phone’s battery life is minimal and that her plastic screen protector is gone. Paul explains that, yes, we don’t provide fully charged batteries and, yes, your protector didn’t fit properly anyway. He also reports that the Apple Store does not have any iPhone 11 screen protectors. That will be $89 per phone plus tax, sign here (on the square thing’s screen with your finger and, no, don’t even think about reading the 15,000-word agreement) and thanks for being part of the digital world. And, yes, the new phones start at $999 …. Y’all come back now, ya’ heyah.

For sure, we will be back.