Close call with a lost phone

Oddly enough, the 22nd time I checked my jacket pocket the phone still wasn’t there.

Nor the 36th time or the 43rd time.

On Saturday evening I came into town to cover the Candy Cane Lane Festival in Yarmouth. The Collins Street parking lot was unavailable, so my son Justin and I looked for a place to park on a side street. We stopped on one side street and both of us got out of the car, but I opted to go park elsewhere and we parted ways.

Before leaving the car after parking, I slung my camera bag, my laptop bag and my purse over my shoulder. As I took a few steps away from my car I tapped my jacket pocket to make sure I had my cellphone. My pocket was empty.

I went back to the car to grab it. This was easier said than done. It was nowhere to be found.

I checked beside the seat, under the seat, between the seats, the front seats, the back seats, the trunk. Next to car, under the car. I looked in my purse, my camera bag, my laptop bag. I checked other bags in the car. I was thinking how great it would be if Justin were still with me so we could use his phone to call mine and listen for a ringtone.

I walked back to the other side street we had been at and searched the side of the road. Nothing. Back to the car I went.

After another 10 minutes I gave up on the search, as well as my plan to tweet photos from the festival to Twitter. As I walked towards the newsroom I checked my pocket another 11 times, just in case the magic fairy who puts missing things back in the place you have already checked repeatedly had come through for me.

But she hadn’t.

It wasn’t even bad enough that I had lost my phone. It’s also a company phone. I wasn’t looking forward to that email Monday morning.

I headed to Main Street to cover the festival, which, I thought, was a wonderful community event. I especially loved seeing how happy and excited all of the kids were.

After half an hour of being there I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Justin.

“Did you take my cellphone?” I asked him. “Nope,” he said.

I explained it was missing and that when we'd go back to the car we’d use his phone to call mine. “My phone is dead,” he said.

Of course it was.

Then I sprung another theory I had on him. Before parking the car we had gone through the drive-thru at Wendy’s because he was hungry. I had my phone then but after he left the car with the bags my phone was gone.

“Maybe it fell into one of the bags,” I said. “Where are the bags?”

He had thrown them in a dumpster.

I know what you’re thinking – why didn’t I just use the ‘Find my phone’ app to locate my phone? Problem was, I didn’t have it activated.

Oh those darn hindsight to-do lists.

After covering the festival I convinced my-less-than enthusiastic son to climb into the dumpster. He was convinced the phone wasn’t there, but a dumpster dive compared to my incessant pleading felt like the lesser of two evils. In he went. He pulled out the bag as a person was walking by staring at him. He was right, other than some rogue uneaten French fries there was no phone.

“Weren’t there two bags?” I asked. He took me to the trash receptacle he had thrown the other bag in. We dug around for the bag while the same person from before watched us – an observation not lost on Justin. “He must think I’m really hungry,” he said.

Again, no phone.

We went back to the car and searched and searched some more with no luck. Justin, who was driving, said he’d go back to the other street we had been on so we could search there.

As we pulled onto the street within seconds Justin slammed on the brakes and told me to get out.

“There’s your phone,” he said, pointing to it laying on the street.

I could not believe it. My phone had been laying on the street for two hours and no one had run it over, although we almost did. Big credit to Justin for spotting it in time.

When I shared my story later on, my brother-in-law Steven said to me, “Isn’t this the phone you have been hoping to have replaced?”

In other words, perhaps Justin should have hit the gas instead of the brake?