DARN CELL PHONE

    

                                                DARN CELL PHONE
                                                                                   T. WIELAND ALLEN

      So here I am, standing in my kitchen laughing out loud at myself.  I must be the funniest person I know or I just do silly things that always make me laugh at myself.  Today was the topper, I mean the absolute topper.
      I run a small home based business alone since my husband died and so I have to carry the business phone around with me everyplace in the house.  Don't want to miss a single business call. 
      Since my husband died, my adult children have been very attentive to me, calling regularly to check on me to make sure I'm not laying dead on the floor or maybe laying flat on the basement floor again, where I was a month ago after falling down the basement stairs. So that necessitates my carrying around my cell phone also.  If they can't get hold of me, they start calling around to make sure I'm still alive.  I really appreciate that.
       Per usual, this morning I had carried the business phone and my cell phone to various areas of the house so I could answer whichever one rang.  Feeling a little bit in bondage to the phones has been tough on me, independent soul that I am.   But, it's been a necessity to have both phones near by me at all times.
        Neither phone had rung yet this morning, but I had sent and answered several texts.
         I had done some office work and had sat down to finish a business chore when the cell phone rang.  Surely it was my son who lives in sunny California because he usually calls at about the same time every week.  Intending to reach for the cell phone sitting alongside the business phone, my hand came up empty handed. No phone there.   The phone kept ringing its merry tune. 
         Looked all over the kitchen.  No phone.
         Looked all over the office.  No phone.
         Looked all over the office bathroom where I take it when I take a potty break.  No phone.
         Back to the kitchen, further tearing up the kitchen, there was no phone, even though the ring sounded like it was in that room.
         Back to the office, tearing up the office, moving papers, moving documents, frantically trying to answer the cell phone. The caller was obviously persistent.   No phone, even thought the ring sounded like the phone was in the office, too.  Again, no phone and I left the office in such disarray that it will take a week to reorganize it. 
          Back to the bathroom, where the sound now came from.  It seemed to be saying that the lost cell phone was in the bathroom.  I opened the vanity, thinking I might have inadvertently shoved it in there while putting away some cosmetics.  No, no phone.   
          However, I had dialed my own cell phone number with the business phone, hoping to be able to follow the sound of the ring to the right room.  The mystery was that every room I entered, it sounded like that was the room where the cell phone was hiding.
           I had had too much coffee so that alarming feeling came upon me that said that I better go to the bathroom or I would be changing underpants and pants in a few minutes.
           The cell phone was still ringing from the last call I had made to my own cell phone, hoping to be able to follow the sound of the ring.  I was desperate to potty so I sat on the toilet and was amazed that the ringing sounded like it was coming from the toilet stool.  How could that be? 
           Suddenly I remembered that I had decided to take the advice of a friend and put the cell phone in the back pocket of my jeans. There is was, all safe and sound, neatly enclosed in my back pocket.
           It didn't take me long, astute as I am at my age, to figure out that the reason the cell phone sounded like it was in every room I rushed into is because it was, in reality, in every room I entered.  It was in my back pocket ringing its annoying little ring, trying to tell me where it was hiding.
           Never again will I put it in my back pocket.  I'll do what I have always done in the past, put it right beside the business phone where I can see it and where it is accessible.
           It could have been worse, it could have ended up in the toilet stool like what happened to my youngest sister when she rushed to go to the bathroom after a long walk and it fell into the toilet when she pulled her jogging pants down.  Her cell phone went to never, never land, flushed down the toilet and into the sewer system.
           At least my cell phone was retrievable, found in the back pocket of my jeans.  Short term memory has never been a problem for me.  Maybe I better check for other warning signs.
            Oh, well, the top of the cabinets in the kitchen need to be cleaned off anyway and the unorganized clutter in the office needs to be reorganized and the vanity in the office bathroom needs to be cleaned out.  Frantically looking for the cell phone might have done me a favor.  I'll need to get with the chore quickly now, instead of waiting until the mood strikes me.               
             Now that I think about it,  I kind of felt like a dog chasing his own tail, oblivious to the fact that what he is chasing belongs to him.
             My father-in-law always said that getting older isn't for sissies.  It's not too bad, really, because I spend a lot of time laughing at myself.  I think I'm funny, even if nobody else does.