Out of touch and not liking it one bit

I lost my Iphone for the first time. Well, that statement isn't true since I lose the damn thing all the time in and around the house, but I meant it as I actually lost it somewhere outside my house/car range far, far, away. It was a terrible feeling.

I keep my cell phone in my front pants pocket all during the day. It is there now while I type this. Since I own three pairs of the same jean shorts and wear them all most every day I have no problem, but on the days that I wear my workout clothes or my other pair of shorts with no pockets (why did I buy these) I have issues with my phone. On this day I had worked out and had opted not to shower as the day was so nice that I came home and sat outside by my pool. By the time I was suppose to climb into a car to pick up kids it was too late to change and so I just carried my cell phone with me in the car. From the school we ran to Sam's Club. I went to a different Sam's Club then the one I usually go to because I thought this one was closer to school and because I figured I wouldn't run into anyone I knew on that side of town dressed as I was with sweaty workout hair.

That is some foreshadowing there, of course, because the distance from my house to the club is farther and because I did run into someone I knew, someone who is drop dead gorgeous no matter what she is wearing and who looked exceptionally beautiful on this day. Of course. My phone was in my purse up until I ran into this friend at which point I removed it to show her a picture. I remember carrying it with me up to the check out, but after that is a blank.

I paid. I took my receipt, and because you can't get out of the door without it, I had to keep it in my hand. I also had my club card in my hand. From there we stood in line to get some pretzels for the girls. That in turn gave me another receipt. At that point Darcy reminded me that she had swim practice. She has had swim practice every day at the same time since before school started yet it never crossed my mind. We are in a carpool and I'm the leg that takes the girls to practice. Now I realized that I was far from home, practice started in twenty minutes, and my hands were full of cups, napkins, lids, receipts, and cards.

The line to fill the drinks and then the line to get out seemed endless. By that point I was coming unhinged, panicking at having forgotten swim practice and panicking because I needed to get her to swim practice. We left. I drove south at a speed that was probably faster than normal, picked up the carpool, drove home and dumped out Madison and waited while Darcy changed. From there I drove to practice. We were fifteen minutes late which actually put me closer to the time that I had to pick up my friend's child at his bus stop not far from practice. I drove there and wondered what I would do to kill the time until the bus came having forgotten my normal book. I figured I would play on my phone.

That is the first time I thought about the phone. Immediately I remembered it was in my purse. I pulled off of the road to wait, shut off the car, and prepared to relax. I pulled up my purse from its position on the car floorboard and opened it for my phone. There was no phone. What? I dug some more. I began to feel the panic creeping in. I patted my non existent pockets. I looked in the console between the seats of my car. OMG! My phone! My phone was gone! I had lost my phone! Full panic mode hit me.

My life is in that phone! Immediately, I reached for my phone to call Madison to see if she had my phone. But of course I didn't have a phone to reach for to call anyone. Hopelessness. Despair. I can't call anyone! I looked at the time and contemplated speeding home to see if Madison had picked it up. I was desperately racking my brain, rewinding my last half an hour of life. All I could come up with was my full hands of receipts and cards and cups. I had to have lost it at Sam's. My guess was at the register.

The wait for the bus was a long one when in reality it was mere minutes. This bus is a crazy stop with a different substitute driving the bus daily so that the time of arrival is anyone's guess. The time is suppose to be 4:40, but the earliest has been 4:25 and the latest 5:30. The ironic thing about me sitting and waiting for the bus with my phone being lost was that two days previous I had sat with my friend at the phone store helping her to purchase a phone for the kid I was waiting to pick up. Where we discussed whether or not to purchase insurance on whether or not he would lose the phone.

By the time the bus pulled up and the kid got into my car I was a maniac as I'm known to get. But I didn't want to scare this poor kid who is still in middle school so I tried to remain calm while I explained my situation. He was sweet. In a calm voice, much like Madison would have done, he went over my last few hours asking me if I had gone home after Sam's, had I checked my purse thoroughly, where was the purse now, etc. At his house I called Madison who did not have my phone. I yelled at her to find it, hung up on her, said good-bye to the kid, and raced back to my car. Only as I drove home, telling myself that it was just a phone and that my family was safe and sound, did I think that I could have just dialed my phone number instead of Madison. And then I reached for my phone to call my phone and panicked all over again because Holy-Mother-of-God-I-had-no-way-of-reaching-people!

I raced through my front door to find Madison calmly playing the piano.  She stopped and informed me that Sam's had my phone. I know I heard what she said, but it was like I couldn't turn myself off. I was heading to the computer to look up the app that would tell me where the thief I knew had my phone was living with my phone. I was halfway to said computer before her words registered and I stopped. And immediately burst into tears.

Madison had called the number and a Sam's employee had answered and informed her the phone was at customer service no worries. I put on a pair of pants with pockets, got back into my car and drove back to practice to pick up the carpool again because the mother who normally did that leg of it had a hair appointment. At practice I had to actually park and get out and go in to get the girls because I had no way of texting that I was there. Sigh. How do people do this? After dropping off the girls, I got back into my car and headed back to Sam's to get my phone.

The round trip took me an hour in traffic, but it gave me time to calm down. The phone was with a supervisor and I refrained from kissing it when she handed it to me. I put it into my pants pocket and proceeded to pick up an item I had forgotten earlier when shopping there. The trip back home was much more relaxed and I thought about the good ole days when we didn't carry our lives in our phones nor our phones on our person. And that made me feel old and I dripped some more tears down the cheeks before I got a grip, took a deep breath, and drove up into my driveway safe and sound and once again connected.