That awful sinking feeling

You know the feeling when you realize something is not where you thought it was and you call all hands on deck to begin the search.

Well that happened to me last week. I swore my phone was in my backpack. It wasn’t.

Quickly I did a mental scan for the phone’s last known location. It wasn’t in the car. It wasn’t in the suitcase or with the kids’ toys. It wasn’t anywhere. It was lost.

M’Lynn finally joined the search two days later. I think she was so upset about the prospect of buying another electronic replacement that she joined the search party. Earlier this summer, I purchased a new Kindle to replace one with a broken screen. No way was she going to allow another purchase. I had to find the phone or it’s bye-bye Android for me.

Not wanting to accept my T9 texting fate, I called the hotel a full nine days after we checked out.

“No way they have my phone,” I thought as I dialed. “But I sure don’t want to go back to T9.”

I called. They checked, or didn’t, and never returned my call. No one called back all day, or the next. It was surely lost and I’d soon only be dreaming of Ice Cream Sandwiches.

I called back just to confirm my fate and this time they asked for my room number. How was I supposed to remember that? It was two weeks ago! All I could remember is that it was in the corner across the hall from the Shamu elevator.

You know what? That worked. They had my phone. It was found!

I quickly gave payment information so the phone could be mailed to me. Five days later without any bubble wrap and in a simple FedEx envelope mailer, my phone arrived as good as new.

(The awful sinking feeling is back. The phone was lost (again) as we boarded the plane from Seoul to Shenyang. It was too late to go back to the gate and get the phone. The airplane doors were secured.)