A Tale of a Single Cell: Losing brains and cells

While I'm on the subject of cell phones I should relate a story of my most extensive experience with these instruments of satan.

A couple of years ago the wonderful and dear friend in whose house I formerly lived bought a prepaid cell phone. I vaguely recall that she got it before taking a road trip out to South Dakota to visit her oldest son despite what she tells me is the vast "no signal" zone in Montana in which a breakdown would make it most useful. I might be wrong about the purpose or that trip's date. In any case, she bought a prepaid cell.

She'd had it a while, tucked into the glove compartment in the car, when we set out to visit some friends who then lived in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington. We stopped to do some shopping along the way south. Once we were ready to continue on to Kent, Anna asked that I call Bill and Mary to let them know that we'd be at their house in about a half hour. She was driving, please note.

I managed to figure out how to use the demon device, placed the call, relayed the message and shut the phone off. Anna had extracted it from her purse so I sat with the thing in my hand during the rest of the drive. When we arrived I set the cell phone on the car's dashboard and made to exit the car. Anna said, "Don't put it there! Someone's likely to steal it." Given the upscale, neighborhood of condominiums and tract homes we were in the likelihood of a break-in to steal her cell phone was almost as likely as Dick Cheney being honest or Alberto Gonzales being competent, but she seized it from the dashboard and the cell phone disappeared I knew not where.

We had a nice visit with our friends, went home later that evening and life went on.

A couple of days later Anna asked me pointedly, "Do you remember what you did with the cell phone?" I related that I'd seen it last when I put it on the dashboard.

"Well, it's not there."

"No. You took it. I don't know what happened to it after that."

"I don't either. I don't have it."

"Did you check in the car?"

"Yes."

"Is it in your purse?"

"No. I looked."

"You're sure."

"Yes! I took my purse apart. It's not there."

A bit later I went up to the car and searched under seats and in all the recesses I could find. There was no cell phone. I reported that my search was fruitless.

"Well, there goes $60. I don't know what you did with it."

Even I, undiplomatic as I am, knew enough not to answer that one. I had lost the cell phone. I was an irresponsible turd and suitable punishments would be meted out at a time to be named later. They came. Have no doubt about that.

Months pass. Seasons change. Life goes on until one day Anna spontaneously says, "I was out at the doctor's today and was looking for something in my purse. I couldn't find the thing I was looking for but while I was searching I felt something hard in my purse. It was in a separate pocket attached to the bag near the strap. I opened up the pocket and what do you think was there?"

"The cell phone, right."

"Yes. The cell phone was there all along." She was exceptionally pleased that it had reappeared. I, on the other hand, thought it was the funniest thing I'd heard in days and promised that it would be a story I'd not soon forget, more because it's funny rather than that I deserved a bit of revenge for the crap I'd taken as the one who lost the cell phone that was only used once!

Stories like this don't really have a convenient end like some literary product. They are real life stories and, as such, they just peter out as we turn our attention to the next thing that real life has to throw at us. It's not even a story specific to Anna because nearly everyone of us has "lost" something that we really had all along. As we get older, Poe's tale of The Purloined Letter turns into The Senior Moment Letter with increasing frequency. And I can't even turn this into some lesson to prove in some new and additional way that cell phones are hell spawn. No, it's just a tale that couples, friends, relatives live out every day. But it does have the salutary effect of allowing me, whenever Anna began tooting her own horn especially loudly, of injecting a note of humility by turning to her with a short and simple question: "Remember the cell phone?"