It could send, but it couldn’t receive, reliably, anything. No texts. No phone calls. Except when it wanted to. It was like dealing with a patient from a House M.D. episode.

One friend thought I was mad at her, because I wasn’t responding to her calls or messages. Another thought I was seriously ill. The first called a mutual friend, who assured her I was not angry at anyone. The other eventually caught up with me on QQ.

The flakiness started Friday. People were complaining they were texting me, but not getting my usual prompt response. After pulling out the SIM card, buffing the contacts and blowing some air into the Treo, I got it to receive for about 10 minutes, reliably, and longer, sporadically. Some people could reach me, while others couldn’t. Frustrating.

I’ve had the thing for about three years, and it’s about five years old, ancient by cell phone standards. It was beginning to exhibit some other annoying behaviors, like refusing to charge unless I connected it just so, and arranged it on the desk just right. If I bumped it too hard, it would shut off the radio. Occasionally, the touch screen would not respond, but after I pressed on the entire surface, it would work again.

So, I was considering buying a new phone, because I knew eventually the Treo would just die. I was just hoping I could postpone spending the money a little longer. No such luck. A cell phone is not all that useful if no one can reach you, especially for someone who kinda needs his clients to call him to confirm appointments.

On Tuesday I went downtown with a student who was friends with a manager of a China Mobile phone store. I knew I wanted a Nokia, specifically the e63, but the price (1980 yuan, about $289) gave me pause. They showed me a Chinese smartphone that looked like a cheap copy of a Nokia smartphone (and at 200 yuan, very, very cheap), but it felt like a cheap POS that might last three months before the keys started falling off. I considered buying a regular phone, the kind without a QWERTY keypad, but in the end I realized it was false economy. We bargained with the manager, and I got the Nokia e63 for 1800 yuan (about $260).

Of course, an hour later, another friend told me her boyfriend had bought the same phone for 1400 yuan at a different shop. You just can’t win.

My shop is catty-corner to Jishou’s only KFC, on one of the city’s busiest intersections. Doubtlessly, I have walked past this shop dozens of times, and, as distinctive as I am here, the manager and the staff had seen me pass by.

Having me as a customer — a paying-a-bunch-of-money one, at that — was apparently the highlight of their week. So, I had to pose for photos with everyone, the manager, the salesmen, the saleswomen, even the student I came with! More images of me for people’s QQzones.

Anyway, I like the new phone, though I am still learning how to use it. And tomorrow, I will go back to the shop to buy the USB data cable that Nokia so kindly fails to provide. Hopefully I can avoid another round of photos.

The Newark, Ohio, high school student agreed Nov. 20 to court-mandated conditions, which for a teen are essentially house arrest, to avoid being charged with a felony and ending up on sex offender lists for the rest of her life.

She needs to comply with restrictions on cell-phone and Internet usage, as well as a curfew, and the case will apparently be dismissed in the spring and the whole fiasco wiped from her record, according to this report in her local paper.

Earlier in the fall, the girl had taken nude photos of herself with her own cellphone, and sent them to several classmates. The pics promptly went viral in Licking Valley High School, and school authorities soon went berserk, pointlessly confiscating cell phones (closing the barn door after the horses are gone) and calling the cops to arrest the girl for sex crimes.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Three layers of stupid. First layer: the girl sends the photos. Second layer: school goes ballistic. Third layer: law enforcement over-reacts. At least the courts are sensible.

Here’s the icing on the stupid cake. The local newspaper insists on identifying the girl as a foster child, as if that status explains everything. (“Look, she’s a foster kid, and you know they’re trouble. A regular kid wouldn’t be a perv.”) The first report about her made a point of telling the world she was fostered out. This most recent one quotes her “foster mother,” perpetuating the label.

(The Nov. 21 report also incorrectly says the girl “repented” in juvenile court. You don’t repent in court; you repent in church. You admit guilt and apologize, or state your regrets, in court. Small-town papers … sheesh!)

I don’t know anything about this girl’s background. Maybe she’s a “troubled” youth, whatever the fuck that means. But, maybe, just maybe, her parents were the troubled ones, and she was on the wrong end of things. Kids get fostered out for all kinds of reasons, usually not of their own doing. They are not all troublemakers. Besides, sending nude photos of yourself by cellphone hardly (I almost said, “barely”) qualifies as a crime.

My mother was a foster child. When her mother died in 1915, six months after giving birth to my mom, she and her two brothers were removed from my grandfather’s home and sent into foster care. (In those days, it was assumed that single fathers were incapable of raising children. My grandfather had two sisters living in the City, and a passel of nieces. He would have managed, but it was the times.) My uncles went to a boys home on Long Island and my mother was sent to an orphanage, and eventually to foster care.

Her life was tough, but she turned out OK. Her rebellion against her foster mother (a strict, very old-fashioned German woman) was to duck into an alley on the way to school and take off the bloomers her foster mother insisted she wear under her school clothes. By that time, bloomers were 20 years out of fashion, and plug ugly.

So, I sympathize with the plight of this Ohio girl. She needs to graduate high school on schedule, and get away from this town where everyone knows she’s a foster child. (It’s a small town. Her name is not in the newspaper reports, but surely everyone knows who she is. Gossip travels faster than light.)