I promise I’ll explain the weird picture in just a moment, but first I must climb upon my soapbox and rant about my favorite topic: the addiction of the human race to the cell phone. The worst thing that could have happened, in my opinion, is for the portable phone (a necessary item, I admit) to be reduced from a cumbersome bag with a telephone inside, to the point where it can be held in the palm of one hand. Add to that the fact that the so-called “cell phone” isn’t so much a telephone anymore as an appendage connected to the hand. This appendage is so amazing because it can do everything except produce your offspring…and I dread the day when they figure that out!
Given that this is how I feel about the cell phone, it is probably surprising to people that I actually do have one. I use it once in a great while to locate Roy when we are in public and separated, but mostly it just sits in the bottom of my purse and runs down its battery…until Roy thinks of it and charges the poor thing! Getting the phone was at the insistence of Roy because I travel 28 miles one way in the country in South Dakota to go to work. I see the sense of it, but for the record, in the time I have had it, I have used it on the road once, and that was not a weather-related call!
The world has not caught up with my bad attitude about phones, since it seems that now, you can’t even make a purchase without giving out personal information.
“That is 30 dollars for the paint and could I get your phone number,” said the young clerk at the hardware store.
“What?” I said, in an unnecessarily loud voice. “Young man, did you just ask me for my phone number?” He was reduced to a flushing, flustered mess and guess what? I was allowed to buy the paint without giving my phone number. Cell phones! Bah! Humbug!
I have never lost the phone, but to be fair, I don’t go looking for it, either. Usually my phone is, as I said, at the bottom of my purse. That is, until this week. And that is when the trouble began.
We have been experiencing a storm, this week, of a size and length that has not occurred in quite some time. As the white stuff piled up outside and the wind began to howl like something out of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Long Winter, Roy and I settled down and resigned ourselves to getting whatever work we could do at home finished. Roy had some hook-up needed whereby he used his cell phone to set it up. However, in the middle of the operation, he needed a second phone to call his co-worker.
“Where’s your phone?” he hollered from the house desk.
“In my purse, where it is always is,” I answered.
“No, it’s not; I’ve looked. It isn’t there,” came the ominous answer. I walked into the dining room to find my purse, looking much as it does in the above picture with my wallet, combs, pens, kleenix and spare cough drops spread everywhere.
“Now I’ve got to put all of that back,” I whined.
“No you don’t, you’ve got receipts in there from Tucker’s Grocery Store,” he replied, still raking through the things he had dumped out as if the phone would magically appear.
“So?”
“So it hasn’t been Tuckers for five years. You have five-year-old grocery receipts, but no phone. Where is your phone?”
Suddenly, I was talking to Perry Mason, Dick Tracy and NCIS, all rolled into one. I had to search the car, my coat and other winter wraps and my sewing basket. No, I don’t know why I had to search the sewing basket, but the Crime Scene Investigator wouldn’t shut up until I did!
Finally, he did what all who search for a missing cell phone do…he called it with his phone. He got voice mail and we heard no locating ring from it. Now, I don’t have one of those phones that can tell you where it is, so the case of the missing phone was not to be solved. I took some comfort from the fact that, according to what I see on the crime shows, if I’m ever on the run, they won’t be able to “ping” me to find where I am hiding.
Now, between you and me, I am guessing that my phone was probably left at work. There is really no other place it could be, unless, somewhere between the school and my house, it hopped out of my purse on some “suicide mission” and is now buried under four feet of snow. But we are not going to tell the cell phone Nazi that, unless we have to. Right now, suffice it that he is cleaning my closet, my underwear drawer and the kitchen freezer in the hopes of finding the phone. At least, I’m getting some cleaning done and he is well occupied!
In the meantime, I will enjoy the fact that no one can call me and I don’t have to worry about whether the darned thing is charged or not. Happy snow storm to you all and to all–a good night!
dropsinthewell 