Looking for lost phone is stressful

I don’t know when I got so dependent on my cellphone, but it happened.

I’ve always loved to talk on the phone — from hours lying on the bed in my room when I was growing up, when we were still on a party line — to making sales calls when I spent a couple of years in newspaper advertising. I remember how cool I thought it was when I got a phone INSTALLED in my car. It had to be bolted to the side of the passenger-side console. When it came out, the bolts stayed.

It’s hard to function in my job without a phone.

How many hundreds of hours have I spent doing telephone interviews? I’ve occasionally been hung up on and cursed at through the years by sources and community members who disagreed with something I’d written. Thankfully, those incidents have been few and far between.

I remember how thrilling it was to get Caller ID so those anonymous callers couldn’t be so anonymous. It also made it easier for people to avoid my calls, unfortunately.

That’s when I pick up my personal cellphone and try and, voila! Sometimes people answer.

When I couldn’t find my phone one day last week, I panicked a little. I knew I’d had it at home the night before when I was watching the Westminster Dog Show and This Is

Us because I was getting texts from my brother.

But when I got to work, I couldn’t find my phone anywhere. Every night, I charge it in the kitchen. I usually keep it in the bathroom while I’m getting ready for work so I can check the news alerts or newest Snapchats from my family. Then I stick the phone in my purse before I leave for work, but what happened to it was a mystery.

I remembered checking the weather on my phone before I left, so I knew it hadn’t been stolen.

After asking a co-worker to call my cellphone number and searching my vehicle to no avail, I called my husband, who was still at home. He couldn’t find my phone and didn’t hear it ringing when I called. I was working on a story and needed phone numbers for sources, and those numbers were only in my phone.

I went home and looked for it myself. After all, my husband, being a man, isn’t always the best at finding things, but I couldn’t find my phone, either.

Back at work, a co-worker dropped in, and we started having the cellphone conversation.

“My Rolodex is in here,” he said, holding up the cellphone in his hand. Ah, remember Rolodexes? I still have one at home, but I rarely use it.

Another co-worker told me about the Find My iPhone function on my cellphone. I had never used it, but he showed me how to go to “the cloud” (which I understand about as well as nuclear fission) and locate my phone. When I typed in the username and password, a little map popped up, and it showed that my phone was at my house.

Pretty cool.

Except that I’d already looked there. Everywhere. Even in the refrigerator, because I’m at that age … .

My husband suggested that I look “in pockets,” and I told him I had. However, I went back home and asked the cat if he’d seen it — he had no comment — and I retraced my steps.

Instead of just feeling my

robe, I stuck my hands in the pockets, and lo and behold, there was my phone, with the ringer turned off.

I had four news alerts, lots of missed calls and a text message from a restaurant offering me a deal.

I must say, I felt off kilter without my phone. I’m sure I could manage to live without it.

But I hope I never have to try.