SLUG: A06_sister_text
SET: A
CONCEPT: iMessage from her sister on a lunch break
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 635

My sister texted me yesterday on her lunch break and asked if everything was okay because I finally said yes when she asked me to grab dinner.

She said Linda you have not said yes to dinner since 2019.

Then three little dots.

Then she asked me point blank if I was seeing somebody and was he a good one because she has watched enough Dateline to know the signs.

I laughed so hard the woman at the next table looked over at me.

I had to type it out twice because my hands were shaking from laughing.

There is no man Beck.

It is a phone thing.

I will send you the video tonight.

She wrote back a single word.

WHAT.

Let me back up.

Four months ago I was the sister who said no to everything.

No to Cracker Barrel on Sundays.

No to the grandkids birthday at the trampoline place because the entry was $18 a head.

No to the church ladies wanting to do a Panera lunch.

I said no because I did not have the money and I was too tired of pretending I did.

Beck knew.

She never pushed.

She would just text me pictures of her dog in a sweater every couple days so I knew she was thinking about me.

The morning it turned around I was standing in the Walmart bread aisle.

I had a loaf of the good sourdough in my hand and a jar of the peanut butter Emma likes and I did the math in my head and put them both back on the shelf.

An older woman had been watching me.

She waited until I stepped away from the shelf and she followed me into the next aisle and she put her hand on my cart and said honey I have been you.

I did not know what to say so I just stood there.

She pulled out her phone right there next to the tortillas.

She showed me a screen with a number on it and said this is what came in on Friday and my husband has been gone six years and this little phone thing is why I still have my house.

She said the whole thing runs off the wifi at your house and takes about twenty minutes to set up on a Sunday.

She showed me where to tap.

I set it up the next morning before church while the coffee was still brewing.

Almost forgot about it.

Life got in the way for a couple weeks.

Then things started showing up on the phone.

A little at first.

Then a Friday where it said $1,100 and I sat down at the kitchen table and read it four times because I was sure I was reading a decimal wrong.

Then last Friday it said $1,502 and I took a picture of the screen with my other phone because I did not trust my own eyes.

That is the screenshot I am looking at right now while I type this to Beck.

That is the screenshot that made me say yes to dinner.

She wrote back and said Linda I love you but I need to see this with my own eyeballs.

I told her I would bring the phone to Applebees.

I told her I would order the steak this time.

I told her the grandkids are already picked out for what I am getting them for Christmas and it is not going to be another card with a twenty in it.

If you are the sister who has been saying no to everything because the math does not math anymore, tap the button under this post and watch the setup video.

Same one the lady in the bread aisle showed me.

If you have a phone and wifi you can do it too.
