my life as a nomad

lost

i lost my cell phone this morning. actually, i lost it sometime on sunday, but i didn't notice it until i started looking for it this morning and only then realized that that i hadn't used/seen it since sunday morning. i was more than a little but disturbed by the fact that i had couldn't find it for several reasons:

• i already lost a different phone two months ago
• it cost too much money to replace
• even though i insured this phone against loss/theft/etc, i don't have the cash to spare to pay the deductible
• i use it to shave in the morning
  
• i hate it when i can't find something

in fact, it drives me absolutely bonkers when something's missing. despite my seemingly unorganized and untidy living arrangements, i can usually locate anything i need within a short amount of time. i have a pretty good organizational system in place, but i keep my methods top secret so that nobody else could ever find anything of mine. i call it "creating a valuable commodity out of myself." mom calls it "living in a pigpen." touche

anyhow, the cell phone is still missing. i know what you're thinking: "why didn't you call the phone from your home line, and then listen for the ring?" brilliant idea! which is why it took me exactly .04 seconds to think of it myself. so i called the phone, and voila... it goes straight to my voicemail

d'oh.

this either means that i left the phone on top of the van in north carolina and it's now smashed to a trillion pieces somewhere on the side of the highway; or, the battery is dead. i'm hoping that it's just the battery. i've had some extensive experience with the first scenario, and i'm not a big fan

so since plan A (listening for the ring) was a dismal failure, it's obviously time for plan B, so i hide. (this is actually a very funny inside joke amongst a small and exclusive group. but it's not worth explaining, so if you don't get it, tough luck. trust me though, it's funny) i soon realize that plan B isn't going to work, so i skip right over plan C and move straight to plan D(iscovery). this basically involves looking for it in the usual hiding places: couch cushions, desks, piles of paper, pants pockets, laundry basket, etc.

(an hour and a half later)....

there's a point when you're looking for something when it ceases to be all about finding the lost object. in this case, it became a battle: me vs. the house. i knew the house was hiding my phone. this was established by the fact that i placed it's last known sighting as being in my pants pocket at church on sunday morning. i know it couldn't have snuck out of my pants at church, because i tested the pocket with a similar sized object placed in it. and unless i had been shaken upside down for thirty seconds (something which i think i'd remember), then there was no way the phone would have fallen out of my pants. ok then. so since i drove straight home after church and didn't go anywhere yesterday, i must have taken it out of my pocket while in the house and set it down somewhere... where it is probably still currently residing. so after checking out the usual suspects, i move to the unusual ones: under my bed. inside the microwave. the silverware drawer. light fixtures.

you get the picture.

after my first hour of dismal failure, the house was winning. anybody who's ever been to vegas knows that the house always wins. play long enough, you never change the stakes. the house takes you. unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, then you take the house

(i've been waiting to use that line forever)

so insetad of "betting big," i developed a systematic approach. since i knew that the phone was in the house, i would go through the entire house room-by-room, examining every single spot where a phone could possibly fit or be placed, until i found it. brilliant idea. except... i didn't find it

d'oh.

our house isn't very large. there are only so many places a phone can hide. and i looked through every single one of them, of that i am thoroughly convinced. i did find eighty-three cents in change, so it wasn't a total loss. but still, no phone. i decide to pin the blame squarely on the shoulders of a covert team of canadian gremlins, operating undercover behind enemy lines. figures.

i had at this point worked up a sweat due to my feverish scrutiny of the entire house. so, i decided to take a shower. and as soon as i got in there, and reached for the shampoo, what did i see staring back at me from the shelf?




conditioner. big help that is. who washes out all the grease from their hair, only to put some right back into it? jeepers.

but as i cleared out the cobwebs from my head (literally and figuratively; there are some dark and dusty recesses in most houses that are best left to the spiders), i began to ponder the problem anew. and since i was now sure that it was not in the house, i started to think just where else it might be. maybe i had taken it out of my pocket while driving home from church and left it in the car? unlikely, but definitely a better possiblity than it still being in the house. so as soon as i was done showering, i threw on some clothes and ran out to the car, and there, sitting right between the seat and the door, was

my cell phone.

woot.

i did a little victory dance in the driveway, and almost slipped on the ice and died. at the very least, i provided some amusement for the otherwise forlorn-looking man walking slowly up the street. i think i heard a chuckle eminate from his general direction


and thus my saga ends. i felt triumphant and idiotic at the same time, if that's possible. but mostly glad to have found the phone. i win

there's probably some big lesson or moral that i should draw or illustrate or highlight from this story... but that's not my job.


the end.



(answers coming soon. promise.)

posted by Patrick @ 9:00 PM