Check Your Batteries

I have a friend that I'll call Cocoa. I don't think he'd mind if I shared this story about him.

Unfortunately, Cocoa had a bad marriage. His wife divorced him and they share joint custody of two children who are now pre-teens. The ex-wife is a foreign national and has threatened to take the children back to her homeland when she gets angry at him. This threat obviously concerns him and gives her a degree of power over him.

Because of her threats, Cocoa has hidden the fact that he's been dating a new woman for the last few years. He doesn't want his wife getting angry and taking the children. He doesn't want his children to know either, because they might tell his ex-wife.

Recently, the joint custody arrangement has led to the need to lend his cell phone to his children. Because his current girlfriend calls a lot, he was nervous that she might call when the kids have his cell.

Cocoa has always been a smart guy. His nightmare situation has one of his kids talking to their mom while a call from his girlfriend comes in. Cocoa got around this by changing the name of his current girlfriend on his cell phone to "Low Battery." So when the girlfriend calls, the kids tell their mother that they have to go because dad's cell phone battery is low.

The arrangement worked like a charm until a Tiger Woods situation where the girlfriend got a hold of his cell phone. As background information, the girlfriend is probably pretty angry about dating a guy for the last few years who still won't tell his children about her.

Anyway, she gets his cell phone and sees that he's got hundreds of calls from someone called "Low Battery." She assumes that he's hiding the fact that he's seeing another woman and starts giving him the business. When he explains that she is, in fact, "Low Battery," she snapped and dumped him.

Poor bastard.