Smile-breaks
If You Lose Your Cell Phone, Call Me
I’m running around the house. Where is it? Where is it? I was gonna be on time today, but I can’t leave without it.
I checked the chair where I always, always, always leave it – except last night. Sometimes it slips out of my purse onto the chair but I don’t notice until I’m settling into the driver’s seat of my car and suddenly I realize I don’t have it and I run back into the house to get it. It’s probably sitting there right now waiting for me. I charge back into the house.
Nope. Not there. Maybe it’s on the kitchen counter where I charge it at night. I’m sure I didn’t charge it last night, but…
Right. I didn’t.
Betcha I left it in Paul’s room. Sometimes when I say good morning to him, I set it on his bed and forget to pick it up and when I get out to my car and flip the lid of the cup holder to set it there, I remember I left it.
By now I’m getting close to frantic. Visions of driving twenty-five miles to work without a cell phone -
Ohmigosh! I just realized I’m gonna have to make it through the entire day without my cell.
I made it for forty-three minutes last Saturday when I forgot to take it with me to Starbucks, but that’s the longest I’ve been without it – except New Year’s Eve three years ago – and even that was only four hours, five minutes and thirty seconds.
I hurried through the house one more time. I checked the nightstand, the bathrooms – I never use my, okay, sometimes - the TV room, the garage, my pal-who-puts-up-with-me’s truck. I pulled off the couch cushions and it wasn’t under there and I looked under the chair and under the bed and under the dining room table and I gave up.
I was halfway to the garage when my pal-that-puts-up-with-me said, “What’s your number? I’ll call you.”
I looked at him. “What good will that do? I don’t have my phone."
“You know,” he said, “I’ll call you and you can find your phone.”
“How’m I going to…”
Oh yeah! I remember. You lose your phone; someone calls you and you follow the ring.
I turned back toward the house. As I opened the door, an old familiar sound beckoned. That jingle-jing-jing of my Mexican rumba ring cheered my heart like you wouldn’t believe.
Ahhhh – my life has been restored. My phone is calling me.
From where? Over here… I follow the sound. It gets louder. I’m going in the right direction. I would follow that ring to the ends of the earth.
“Mom! Your phone’s ringing!” Paul shouts from his bedroom.
“I know. I know. Where is it?”
He points at his phone stand, and there, lying serenely beside his phone and jing-jingling its happy tune, is my beloved cell phone.
“So glad you called,” I tell my pal-that-puts-up-with-me as I grab my cell and run out to the car.
You know, after all that, I was only ten minutes late to work, but since I had my cell phone, I called in and told them I’d had a slight delay due to a severe cell phone malfunction and surprisingly everyone understood and I spent the rest of the day listening to my co-workers’ tales of lost phones and missed calls and other life-endangering happenings related to cell phones and I don’t know how we ever lived without them, but tell you what -
If you ever misplace your cell phone, call me – I’ll give you a ring.