Nothing Panics Us Like Losing Our Smart Phones

  You don’t realize how much you rely on your cell phone until you lose it.

  It happened to me on a recent trip to California to see a Boise State football game – and something else I’d wanted to see for a long time. More on that in a future column.

  Our flight took us from Boise to Salt Lake City to San Jose. All was well until we landed in San Jose I and opened my carry-on bag to get my phone.

  It wasn’t there.

  “It has to be here!” I said to my wife with growing alarm. “I’m sure it was in the side pocket.”

  It wasn’t in the side pocket. Nor was it in the main part of the carry-on or in my checked bag. It was just plain gone.

  “You stopped at the restroom on the way to baggage claim,” my wife said. “Maybe you left it there.”

  The restroom was up a flight of stairs, a long walk away and on the other side of a security barrier I wasn’t allowed to cross. A helpful airport employee offered to look for me, though. 

  The phone wasn’t there.

  It was with a heavy heart, to quote late President Lyndon Johnson, that I trudged back down the stairs to rejoin my wife and a friend.

  “You must have left it in the airport in Salt Lake,” my wife said. “You went to the men’s room while we were waiting to board the plane to San Jose. I’ll bet you left it there.”

  She was probably right. I had a vague memory of putting my phone down on a ledge in the restroom. It was probably still there, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it. We called the Salt Lake airport’s lost-and-found number and were told that no lost phones had been reported. 

  Nothing panics you like losing your phone. It takes losing one to appreciate all the things we use them for and take for granted. Foremost in this case was being able to call each other if we got separated at a busy airport. Not to mention the texts and emails, voicemails, apps, photographs, people who could be trying to call me … 

  Now the phone not only was gone, but in another city and state hundreds of miles away.

  There was, however, a scintilla of hope.

  The phone was far from being the first thing I’d lost recently. It happens that I am extraordinarily skilled at losing things. My keys, for example. They’ve been lost for weeks. Luckily there’s a backup set, without which I’d have been doing a lot of walking lately.

  The lost keys have to be somewhere in the house because I couldn’t have driven home without them. We’ve looked everywhere for them- in drawers, closets, cupboards, coat pockets; under beds, couches, dressers … We’ve done everything but have the walls X-rayed.

  And still no keys.

  This brings us back to the scintilla of hope. Because of my longstanding habit of losing things, it makes sense to take  precautions. One of them is putting my name and a phone number on items likely to be lost. Taped to the back of the lost phone was a piece of paper with my name, my wife’s phone number and the words, “Reward for Return.”

  For some reason (a premonition perhaps?), it occurred to me the night before leaving for California that the number on the back of the phone was my wife’s old number. All too familiar with my propensity for losing things, I printed a replacement piece of paper with the correct phone number and taped it to the phone.

  We’d been in San Jose for a couple of days when my wife’s phone rang.

  “It’s for you,” she said. “It’s Delta Airlines.”

  Specifically, it was Delta Airlines’ Terry Garcia, calling to say that some thoughtful soul had turned in my phone at the Salt Lake airport.

  “I thought I was the only one who put my name and number on the back of my phone,” Terry said. “Apparently you left yours in one of the airport restrooms.”

  If I purchased a United Parcel Service pre-paid address label and mailed it to her, Terry continued, she would mail the phone to me.

  And she did.

  So the story had a happy ending. 

  Thank you, Terry! 

  And if the person who turned in the phone to Delta happens to read this, thank you as well. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to get that phone back.

  Now if I could just find my keys.

Next:  “The World’s Salad Bowl” and the National Steinbeck Center. 

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.