I lost my phone. It was the stuff of nightmares.
After last week's workplace drama with our sports reporter Brandon, who famously went to the mountains and lost his Blackberry somewhere on the slopes, I was feeling pretty smug. There's nothing like a healthy dose of smugness to throw my karmic balance firmly on the negative side.
See, the thing is, Brandon and I have both purchased protection plans on our Blackberries. His involves paying a small monthly fee and in the event of needing the phone replaced, a deductible of about $150. Mine involves the same monthly fee and if my phone needs to be replaced, walking into Future Shop and waving it over my head and saying, “Emergency! Emergency! This doesn't work anymore.”
As Hamlet said famously, ah, there's the rub.
For my deductible-less replacement plan, I need to have my phone in my hand, with no physical damage. The plan doesn't cover water damage, physical damage, cracked screens or any chunks that may or may not be torn out after the phone was allegedly run over by a massive truck which ground it into the ice and cement of the Nouvelle's parking lot. Allegedly!
Anyway, so while Brandon dealt with his silly insurance company, dealing with refurbished pink phones with broken screens and missing deliverymen, I kept saying smugly, “You should have my insurance plan. Seriously. As long as they don't notice that chunk missing from the phone because of Amber's truck, I'm golden.”
I should have known karma would get me back for that one.
My phone went missing on Friday, sometime between the RJ Lalonde arena and my apartment. The worst part is, when I returned home, rather than flopping on the couch and texting everyone I know until the early hours of the morning, I decided to be responsible and clean my room.
I'd misplaced my laptop cord earlier in the week and had a looming deadline to finish the novel manuscript I've been feverishly working on. See, with me, it never just rains, when it comes to electronics, it pours. Missing my beloved iPod with a broken television and a missing laptop charger, I had no idea that my life was about to get exponentially worse with the loss of my beloved Blackberry.
When I finally noticed it wasn't in my coat pocket, I laughed and said, “Whoops, I left my phone in my car. I know! I'll take the garbage out while I go retrieve it, because I am a mature and responsible person today!”
So I did. And it wasn't there. And I panicked.
I searched my car and I searched my apartment and I tore my newly-cleaned room apart and I dug in my couch and I looked in my fridge and I looked in my box of DVDs and I looked under my chair and I even stared despondently out onto the balcony, hoping to see a little glow of red that meant that not only was my phone found, it was patiently waiting with a text message.
Alas. No luck.
The thing about my apartment is that there is no cable or internet. My phone is the only connection I have to the outside world. How would I call my mother four times a day without a phone? How would I google my random thoughts and questions without a phone?
A few hours later, our reporter Ashley and I were tromping around the snow in the extra parking lot at the C2 while she called it over and over again, hoping to make it light up and become visible in the dark.
Again, no luck.
Worried one of the visiting Fort McMurray fans had found it and were calling their penpals in China and running up my bill, I suspended service and slumped into an impressive well of angst and despair.
I even had a little conversation with God about how grateful I would be to find my phone, before realizing he probably has a whole lot of more important prayers to be listening for and feeling like a really bad person.
I borrowed an alarm clock from Ashley, because without my phone, I have no concept of time or ability to wake up before noon.
I couldn't sleep well, worried about ghosts and Wendigos invading my apartment without my phone handy to call 911 to save me.
Sunday morning, I woke up, disgruntled and confused, at 7:00 a.m., because the alarm was going off. I stabbed half-heartedly at the clock, unable to work the silly mechanism and silence it. Still half asleep, it took about a minute of trying before I went very still because the alarm that was going off was not the clock at all.
It was my phone.
I thought it was a dream. Gasping in astonishment, I staggered from my room, wide-eyed and wild and desperate to find the source of the alarm before it was silenced.
I followed the sound to the couch, tore it apart, and, miracle! My phone fell out of the cushion as if I had not just spent the most anxiety-filled weekend of my life, phoneless and alone!
I went back to sleep, clutching my phone to my chest. I kept waking up to check and make sure finding it hadn't been a dream.
Lesson learned. No more smugness. No more praying for things I don't really need to be praying for.
Also, I'm pretty lucky to have people willing to stomp around in the cold, dark night looking for my missing phone, especially when they don't hold a grudge after I sheepishly text them to tell them it was in my couch the whole time.
I still slept until noon, however, even with my phone. I guess some lessons take a little longer to sink in.
