If I had a dime for every item I’ve lost, I’d have a whole lot of dimes; a frustrating exchange rate.
I’m not talking about weight, of course – bring on THAT kind of misplacement anytime. I mean keys, passports, licences, wallets … anything that brings your life to an immediate, grinding halt. A cold hand grips your heart, your breathing gets more rapid and, all of a sudden, you’re in the middle of a full-scale panic.
I own a number of items that would be tough to live without, and in this day and age, losing one’s phone is probably absolutely top of the list.
I remember when we had a get-together at our house and I figured that, for once, I’d tried to elevate the cuisine beyond chips and dip. Inevitably, therefore, the weather on the day became wildly unpredictable, and so I had to cancel my BBQ caterer in the morning (it made sense to hire someone instead of serving charred remains on my watch). Of course, the skies cleared up just in time for it to be too late to rebook him, and so the promise of a beautifully prepared feast turned into two buckets of KFC and two large pizzas. No one was unhappy with the changes, but after a day of running around and worrying about rain, I was exhausted by the end of the night.
As I came into the house, I looked for my mobile phone just before I went to bed. No sign of it, but I figured it must be somewhere. As my head hit the pillow, I was fast asleep.
The next morning I awoke at the crack of 10:30 and my body felt like a sack of sand. I was about to close my eyes again for a longer kip, when I suddenly had that feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Where was my phone? I crawled out of bed, went downstairs and began looking. At first I wasn’t so concerned, but as I slowly moved the 698 cans of soda I had overbought from Cost-U-Less out of the way to clear the table, and pawed through the remains of chicken in their cold buckets to no avail, the Lamaze breathing began.
It didn’t help that I was incredibly tired, and so it was in a high-pitched voice almost unrecognisable as my own that I squeaked at best friend and housemate, Lynne, asking if she had seen my phone. It was astounding how quickly it escalated from a calm search to the kind of ‘Die Hard’ methodology employed by John McLean as he tries desperately to locate a bomb and disarm it before time runs out. It didn’t take long to realise that it wasn’t in the house. And when I called it, it went straight to voicemail – never a good sign.
Outside, the rain was like a waterfall. Lynne, sensing by my red face that I was about to revert to the Terrible Twos, offered to stick on her raincoat and wellies and go out to look for my device. Just when I was about to call in a team of people with metal detectors, she came running in like a soggy Paddington Bear with my phone in hand. It had obviously fallen from my pocket onto the lawn the night before. The good news: I had it back. The bad news: Electronics and water don’t mix. After a trip to the emergency room at Cellular World (ending with maybe a few shocks from a phone defibrillator?), I got the gentle hand on the shoulder from the tech. I’m sorry, we couldn’t save it.
Thankfully, they were at least able to retrieve all of my information. If I’d had my choice between the phone surviving or the info on it, I’d choose the latter every time.
As much as phones and computers are expensive, you really can’t put a price on data – contact numbers, addresses, photos, videos … I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve reminded people to back up their hard drives etc., yet, of course, I rarely do so. Gee, that doesn’t sound like me at ALL – handing out good advice to others that I never follow myself. Over the years, I’ve seen people pay out thousands of dollars to data recovery companies to get back information and personal pictures, etc. … that would be a far greater loss than the death of the most expensive computer. Thank God for advances in technology that now perform back-up tasks automatically with access to lots of storage. Hello, Mr. Cloud. It’s usually only the truly organised who have the discipline to do the same manually.
Keys. How many of us have lost our keys? Perhaps “lost” is too strong a word. How about “periodically misplaced?” I have so many on multiple key rings all strung together like a gaoler’s charm bracelet that it’s difficult to lose them permanently, but as the interior of my house has what you might call ‘an eclectic design’, it’s quite easy to put them down and then forget where the %$#@*& that was. I’ve always been amused by the hotel keys handed to you in some older British and European hotels. Instead of the modernised magnetic strip cards, you get the key/keyhole scenario with some of the biggest key rings upon which you’ve ever clapped eyes.
In Rome, it was a huge heavy gold tassled thing that barely fit in a handbag. In the UK, it was the kind of large piece of wood usually reserved for service station toilets off any one of your favourite Interstates. When you are initially handed one of these things, you have to laugh, but then I can’t remember a single time when I’ve lost those hotel keys, yet I am FOREVER having to ask for replacement key cards. Maybe there’s something to the madness after all.
Your passport has arguably got to be on the top of the list of stuff you pray you never lose. It isn’t just your only means of travelling internationally – it’s also one of the most difficult things to replace in a short period of time. There are forms to fill in, birth certificates to present, and photographs to produce, and then there’s the wait. And, for some reason, the minute you know you don’t have your passport you suddenly have the urgent need to go on a trip. I think I’m attaching mine to a jumbo key ring.
My mother’s solution to lost effects is always a prayer to St. Anthony. Know what? It’s worked more often than I can tell you – almost to the point that I wonder if he hid them in the first place …
Related Videos
