Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.
Have you ever lost your cell phone? If so, you know what it feels like to lose all contact with the outside world. A friend installed an ap on my computer recently called “Find my iPhone”. All you have to do is open this feature and it’ll make the phone sound alarms. I mistakenly thought I’d be home free with this feature, but without my phone, I couldn’t read what my password was in my contact list!
Today, I completed five days of blowing leaves into three very large piles – 3′ high and 15′ wide. Lots of leaves . Somewhere in one of those huge piles, my cell phone fell out of my pocket. Panic set in at the prospect of digging through the gigantic piles to find it.
It then occurred to me to then email a whole bunch of people, hoping one of them was home, labeling the subject EMERGENCY, and asking him/her to call my number until I answered it.
Mary, thank God, started calling me as I waited outside in the hopes of hearing the ring. It was like the old game of “Hot or Cold”. I frantically tried to follow the ringing. It took a few minutes to find it but not before tearing apart much of the work I’d done. Last winter, I dropped my cell phone in a 2’ deep snowfall and had to dig up a lot of snow to find it. That time, I walked out to the country road, flagged down a car, and asked the driver if he’d call my number until I found it in the snow. He kindly did this.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s to never have my phone on me when blowing or snowing.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU LOST YOUR PHONE?
Trail Baboon 
If I lost my phone I’d probably pour a glass of wine and throw a little party. As you know, CrystalBay, I’m one of those dinosaurs who doesn’t own a cell phone. I get two or three actual personal calls a week on my landline phone, with the rest being robocalls. It is so silly. I’ve had a new phone number for just over a year, and since I don’t often call myself I don’t have it securely memorized. Or put it this way: all the robocallers in Nigeria, Florida and Pakistan know my new number better than I do.
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I”m with you, Steve. White wine or red? 🙂
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If I lost my cell phone, I might not notice for a day or two. Very few people have my cell number—mostly family—and so if a number not on my contact list calls, it’s likely to be spam. Whole days go by where I never even pull it out of my pocket.
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Smart move, CB, about the Find… app. Was the person you stopped on the road laughing?
For me the question is “when you lost your cell phone…” Since I don’t turn on my Tracfone every day – and a “dumb” flip phone at that – I don’t always realize right away that it’s lost. I have actually bought a new TracFone, gone through the process of getting the new one set up, and then finding the original… so I just saved that one till the next time I really lost one. I put bright orange duct tape on one so I could find it more easily i.e., on the floor of the car. It’s amazing, but I still have my original cell phone #, but I hate going through that whole process to initialize.
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BiR, you can usually carry over your old phone number to a new phone. Even a tracfone number to a smart phone.
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I left work Wednesday morning to zip home to get my phone. I had forgot it on the dresser. Daughter expects to have instant access to me to chat and tell me things, and I use the phone to live-stream music on a Bose sound link thingy I keep on my desk. We have wifi at work, and can’t use our work computers for personal business. It is unfortunate that my phone is necesdary to improve my quality of life and sanity.
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I most recently “lost” my cell phone last week…but I had put it on “do not disturb” when I went to an event the night before so calling it was useless. Checked the car, called the venue where I had been…no luck. When I was making me bed the following morning, putting away laundry from the basket at the foot of my bed, the phone popped out between a pile of blankets. whew. Have the fin phone app but never think to use it…as it just shows geography..ie, that it is Mahtowa. Not helpful.
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While I am often very irritated with how my nearly 5 year old (smart) phone works – or rather doesn’t work – I would be even more annoyed to lose it. Nowadays, I find it easier to text people rather than email them. When I’m getting a blood transfusion or am in the hospital or otherwise not able to access my laptop, it’s helpful to be able to go online and get on the trail or catch up on my email or do other stuff. Even when the phone doesn’t work that great.
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HI CB–
I’m glad you’re writing more. If that’s the only way the computer works for you and wordpress, I’m glad you’ve found this way to contribute!
I would be lost without my phone. It’s my calendar, it’s my phone book, it’s my shopping list, my music and my control for several different things. I text with it, I take photos, Today I have used it to control the lighting desk and a hazer with the DMX Cat option.
Oh, and I talk on it too sometimes.
I always joke I need a case that comes with a guy to carry the phone for me.
I’m pretty rough on them. The dust and dirt from farming, the dust and dirt from building, I use it ladders, I use it outside, I drop it.
OtterBox, heavy duty phone case hasn’t let me down yet.
Which reminds me, i better back it up tonight.
Which is another issue I’ve been thinking about; it was originally connected with a laptop that I don’t use anymore.
How do I sync it with the new laptop? I want to keep the music and music files as they are. I don’t have everything on the cloud. But Its not clear to me how I do that. The computer asks me too many questions when I try.
CB, hang onto your phone.
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Thanks, Ben – Glad to know that someone else is too dependent on an iPhone! I carry it everywhere I go just in case someone calls. The sad thing about this is that almost no one ever does! I’ve worried countless times about what I’d do in a power blackout, a computer crash, or no cable. I have no “back up” behaviors. No Plan B. In fact, this morning, my laptop wouldn’t open web sites at all. An hour with my ISP, an hour with Apple Tech, and a trip to Verizon to buy a new modem (whatever that is). Got it home and, of course, couldn’t make it work, so another hour with Verizon tech. The last thing we tried should’ve been the first: reboot the laptop.
Maybe there should be a class called “Surviving without technology”? All I can say its that my laptop is my primary way of feeling connected to the world at large on and hour to hour basis. Now that I’ve got it working again, I’m soooooo relieved and happy as a clam (are clams happy?)
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I misplace my phone often. It’s not a big emergency when I do, since I don’t use it a whole lot. I have some alarms set on the phone so that it chimes a few times a day, even if the phone is off. The chime usually alerts me to its location.
The main thing I like about the cell phone is that I can call my Wisconsin friends without paying for long distance.
If I lost it permanently, I’d be annoyed because I have phone numbers and pictures on it. I should figure out a way to download that stuff.
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I actually have a leaf pile loss story that doesn’t involve the phone. Most Octobers I have what I call the annual leaf pile where some friends get together, build a big pile of leaves and then jump in and stuff the leaves in each others clothes and generally make a mess. Then we come back to my house and have potluck. This story is from a leaf pile about 15 years ago. There were maybe 13 of us at the time and a young couple who were wandering through the park decided to join us spontaneously. Unfortunately at the end of the leaf pile the young woman realized that her engagement ring had come off while we were frolicking. Imagine a leaf pile big enough for 15 people to jump in and then think about the size of an engagement ring. Believe it or not after about 15 minutes of all of us combing through leaves and raking our fingers on the ground we actually found it.
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