Despite slobber, cool factor high

I am a cool grandma.

At least, that's how I saw myself until my most recent attempt at grandmotherly coolness ended up in the not-so-cool category.

My grandson is 11 months old and is the absolute most adorable baby ever. He's cute. He's talented. He's funny. He's smart.

Need I go on?

Of course, his parents - my daughter and her husband - are all those things, too, and so are his other grandparents and great-grandparents and all his aunts and uncles and cousins and greats-this and firsts- and seconds-thats, so he comes by his fabulousness honestly.

The result of all this wonderfulness and adorability is that whenever I'm with him I feel as if I've got to step it up in order to enhance my own cool quotient - which normally is pretty low. Non-existent, really.

But I needed something to dazzle my grandson with, and what better way to entertain a 21st-century baby than with a cell phone?

Brilliant, right? That's what I thought when I noticed how much he loved cell phones. When my daughter would call me on hers and he was anywhere in the room, I could hear him hurrying over to her and try to grab the phone. His eyes lit up anytime he heard one ring. And when he called me on his mom's phone - he apparently only hit redial but still, that took some thinking, didn't it? - I knew exactly how I could increase my coolness factor.

The next time I visited, I gave him my cell phone to play with. You'd have thought I had given him an unlimited supply of Cheerios.

He grinned and spent the next 30 minutes examining every button, light and sound he could find. All I had to do was occasionally wipe the baby slobber off.

"Are you sure he can't hurt it?" my daughter asked.

But I knew I'd found the key to my grandson's heart.

"It's fine," I said, reassuring her. "What can he do to it?"

I was still blissfully optimistic even when my phone rang later and I realized he had scheduled four events and even thoughtfully sent e-mail reminders.

What a little guy.

It was on the drive home, however, that my plan began to unravel. My phone would ring, and with an increasing sense of unease I'd pick up and say, "Hello?" while the callers would say, "Cathy? Hello? Are you there? I can't hear you."

Uh-oh.

Apparently baby slobber has the ability to melt cell-phone speakers.

So after I got a new phone I gave my grandson my old one and he can slobber on it to his heart's content. And I am still a cool Grandma.

Cathy Wood is a freelance writer living in the Shoals. For more from her, visit timesdaily.com.