Last September, my grandmother (81 years old) was in a bit of a pickle. She was driving the 5 miles or so from her place to my mom’s and heard a loud pop from her car. Turns out the brake lines lost pressure and all she was left with were minimal brakes (kinda like putting your foot out the door to try to stop the car).

Seeing as she had no cell phone, she decided to press on and managed to arrive at (well, slightly past, due to the no brake thing) my mom’s place without incident. A happy ending – luckily – but it brought up a fear of her being in worse situations and not being able to call anyone.

So I’ve decided to get her a phone for Christmas.

There’s one thing I had to keep in mind though – electronics baffle her. I know she’s not alone in her age bracket with this problem – and she’s probably better than most. I actually got her to use instant messaging at one point, but she signed each message she sent with “love, grammie” like mini-emails.

But I digress – putting her in a stressful situation and then having her use a cell phone might be too much.

Here’s my plan:

The Firefly from Cingular. Two big buttons to call up numbers for mom (played by my mom, her daughter) and dad (played by me). I purchased the phone on a prepaid plan so it doesn’t cost her anything.

The only problem is that batches of minutes expire after 30 to 360 days (based on how large a bucket you buy). This could could turn into a serious problem. She will be using this phone for emergencies. So if the minutes are expired when she really needs it – well that defeats the purpose, doesn’t it. So for now, we’ll get the larger batches of minutes, just so they last a year, and renew them on her birthday or Christmas or whatever to make sure we stay on top of it.

I’ll report after the holidays on how she takes to the interface. I really can’t get it much simpler. But now I have to make sure she remembers to keep it charged. Ugh.