That Number's Been Disconnected

I've had a cell phone for about three years now. (No, this is not a story about how anti-cell phone I was before that.... or for that matter, still am, when you see how the Average Person tends to use his cell phone in defiance of all good manners. Point being, save your snickering for the appropriate place in this story.)

In those three years, I've never once lost my phone for any length of time. I've left it at home once or twice when I've gone out for a short trip, but that's been the extent of that.

Until yesterday.

I was visiting at my parent's house, and at one point felt in my pocket where I always carry my phone and found it wasn't there. "Huh," I said aloud, "I guess I left my phone at home." And that was all the thought I gave to it at the time.

Then I got home.

I checked the "obvious place," one of the pretty much only two places I ever have my phone when it's not in my pocket. Not there. I checked the other. Not there.

I'd received a phone call about 10 minutes before I'd left for my parents earlier. So maybe for some odd reason I'd left the phone in a strange place after that call?

I scoured my apartment, searching increasingly illogical places. There's no earthly reason my phone should be behind my couch, or in my kitchen trash can, but dammit, I looked.

Nothing.

And then the full scope of my conundrum presented itself. I don't have a house line anymore. (It was simply a vehicle for solicitors to reach me with their crap. There were really only two people who ever called me on that line that I wanted to talk to, and they could use my cell number.)

If my phone was indeed lost somewhere in my place, I couldn't really just call it and listen for the ring.

If I had actually left the phone at my parents', I couldn't call them to ask if they'd seen it.

I was completely cut off.

Ultimately, the only solution was to travel on to a friend's house and lamely ask to use their phone. Shocho helpfully served as that friend, and to his credit he did not even laugh at my plight. He even responded with a sympathetic "oh no!" when I told him my phone had up and vanished. (Perhaps somewhere in the back of his mind was the knowledge that, since he too lives in a no-land-line domicile, that the same fate could befall him. Though I suppose it would have to simultaneously happen to LWC, since her cell phone could serve as the obvious "back-up" in case of calamity.)

Anyway, I made the call to my parents', and they had already found my phone there. It had apparently fallen out on the couch while I was sitting there. Which, to those of you who have lost keys, change, or yes, even your cell phones, in the depths of your couches, may seem like a real "well, duh, of course!" Except I say again: in three years of owning a cell phone, this has never happened to me.

These weren't new pants with unusually shallow pockets I was unaccustomed to. I wasn't doing handstands on my parents' couch. There's simply no explanation for my sudden inability to keep it in my pants (my phone, people!), aside from perhaps Dennis Kucinich using his his strange power over pockets against me.

Anyway, I have my phone back now.

The End