Mobile Madness

A few years ago, my son moved back home and ran up a huge phone bill, calling his friends on their mobile (cell) phones and talking to them for ages. This was a problem because he did it from MY landline. "Awww, Mum, I was out of credit, I won't do it again..."

But he did. Eventually I had a bar put on my phone - it's impossible to call a mobile phone from my landline now - and even though Steve moved out (again) long ago, I didn't bother reversing the bar. I mean, I never call mobile phones from my landline anyway - too expensive!

Baaaaad mistake.

Today I put my mobile phone down somewhere when a violent thunderstorm hit and I ran to check on the chooks next door (another story). When I got back I had a senior moment and couldn't find the wretched thing. The easiest way to find it is to call it from another phone, then run around the house following the ringtone until I locate the phone - right? Simple.

Not so simple. Can't call mobiles from my landline, remember?

Pffft, I am a resourceful woman! I'll call my daughter and ask HER to phone my mobile... Now, where's her number...? Bugger, it's stored on my mobile.

What about the immense brainpower I used to be able to use to recall any number of phone numbers? (I was so good at it, it was practically a party trick! I was a human telephone directory...) But since I got a mobile phone I've kind of stopped trying to remember phone numbers, and the miraculous skill has disappeared - I just punch names and numbers into that little mobile phone of mine these days. The one that I can't find.

I search the house. And again. And again. Retrace my steps. Look in all the likely places. No luck. Look in all the unlikely places... Would I really have left my phone in the oven? I don't even use the oven for COOKING stuff, for goodness' sake!

I try really really hard to remember Kate's number, and dial a number that sounds very familar.

"Hellooooo?" It sounds like Kate putting on a silly voice.

"HI, it's me. Can you call my mobile phone for me? I can't find it.... I won't answer it or anything..."

Dead... Silence... It kind of reminds me of the time at uni when an enormous fart erupted from the loo cubicle next door to mine, and I said jovially "Sheila, is that you?" The silence was deafening. I eventually had to skulk from the dunnies with my hand over my mouth to stop myself shrieking with laughter. The dead silence on the phone right now stretches in the same deathly embarrassing way.

"Hello? Hello, Kate?" I say...

Eventually a lady with an Indian accent says "Who are you? I am Daphne..." How embarrassing.... I apologise profusely, tell Daphne the total stranger what an idiot I am (just in case she can't figure it out for herself) and do a metaphorical skulk by hanging up.

By now I am getting that awful twitchy anxious feeling. WHERE IS MY MOBILE PHONE? I'm irrationally angry with my daughter for not being at the number I called. I am furious with my faulty memory. And I am ready to kill my son because it's all his fault that I put the mobile phone bar on my phone in the first place!!!

I search the house again. This time I use a torch, and find a little bird corpse under a bookshelf, a long-lost earring under the couch, and what appears to be a bit of some kind of construction toy (wtf?) under the griller. But no mobile phone.

A simple remedy would be to go to the house next door (not the house with the chooks, the one on the other side) and ask my lovely neighbour to phone my mobile number - but then she would know that I am an idiot, and I want to maintain my reputation in the neighbourhood. I'm the middle-aged mad biker woman. I don't want to become the tragic phone-losing no-brain...

Happy(?) Ending:
It took something like 2 frustratingly infuriating hours to find the stupid phone, but now I have it. I'm going to have it implanted into some fleshy part of my anatomy somehow, so that I can never lose it again.

Oh, and first thing on Monday I am having the mobile phone bar removed from my landline. Just in case.