I love my cellphone. Let me rephrase that. I am addicted to my cellphone. I’m enslaved by it. In its absence, I feel abandoned, disoriented, slightly less than a whole person.
I’m not addicted to the same degree as many others I encounter on a daily basis, who walk into traffic with their faces glued to the screen, or gabble on their devices throughout every meal, even during in-person conversations. I have been known to go for up to half an hour at a stretch without checking what is happening in the world, or what the weather is like where it’s happening. I don’t even feel an emotional attachment to this phone in particular. To be honest, it’s a bit larger than I prefer – approximately the size and shape of one of the stone tablets Moses fetched down from the mountain.
I’ve enjoyed other phones more, particularly the compact, flip-style ones with tiny screens and not much of a camera, but with a sense of privacy when held to one’s ear. And a flip-phone has never accidentally pocket dialed a total stranger in Tokyo, right? Still, my current gadget takes excellent pictures, the screen is adequate for binge-watching Netflix movies, and I can summon up a keyboard large enough for my not-so-nimble thumbs when I feel like texting. Incidentally, it also makes and receives phone calls.
So imagine my chagrin recently, when I returned from a day of running errands to discover my phone had not returned with me. I’m certainly not the only member of the What’s Up Yukon family who has had this experience, so you may relate to the sense of panic such a discovery unleashes. The mind goes places that defy reason.
I knew I had used it in the outside world several times during the day, but that didn’t prevent me from turning the house inside out. I searched repeatedly in every place a cellphone could conceal itself: the piles of paper on my desk; the wastebasket; the laundry hamper; the fridge; the pockets of every garment I own. Behind, between and under the sofa cushions.
When Herself got home from work, I enlisted her to call my number. Nothing. Even with my hearing aids at full torque. Not so remarkable, really, since I often forget to reactivate the ringer after attending a show, as I had done a few days previously. By that time, alas, most of the places I had visited during the day were closed.
The next morning, I began systematically retracing my steps. No phone at the doctor’s office, or in the nearby lab. No phone at the gas station, the supermarket, the beer store, or several other places where I’d browsed. When the reunion finally took place, it was at my bank.
Thank you, honest person who turned it in. I feel whole again.
