On A Missing Phone

One afternoon this last week my husband, Jerry, didn’t leave to pick up our son from school at the usual hour saying he had a meeting after school. I didn’t think it was possible but Jerry had talked to him since I had so I didn’t say anything.

Then our land line rang. It was our son calling because he needed picked up. Either there had been no meeting or it hadn’t lasted as long as Jerry thought.

As Jerry left to get him I had the brief thought that it was odd my son called the land line. Not odd he couldn’t reach his dad on his dad’s phone. That’s happened before. But each time it has he always called me on my phone, not the land line.

So I thought I’d asked him about it when he got home but the first thing he did was ask me, “Mom, where’s Dad’s phone?”

“I don’t know. Ask him. Why?”

“Because I tried to call him, and a strange man answered his phone, twice.”

Okay. Not good. I’m thinking Jerry misplaced his phone completely forgetting I’d seen him on his not long before our son called. Hoping whoever had it was only answering in hopes of finding the phones owner. I called.

A vaguely familiar male voice answered. But he told me I’d called his phone number. I told him I’d dialed my husband’s number and what it was. He told me his number.

It took an additional second or two but the area code, from a different state, helped everything click. Jerry had forwarded his calls to his brother-in-law’s phone.

We spent a half an hour or more talking to him and my sister-in-law laughing about the issue and telling them they’re going to have to take messages for Jerry since they’ll be getting all his calls.

Eventually we hung up and I was faced with finding his phone without being able to call it so we could get it off call forwarding.

Then I wondered if the cell phone company could be any help so I called them and told the customer service representative my problem.

She cracked up. She’d done something similar to her phone just the week before. Apparently accidentally forwarding your phone isn’t all that uncommon because they actually have the means to undo it.

With that fixed I proceeded to call my husband’s phone again. I could hear the buzzing, but couldn’t pin point where it was coming from.

Two of my children all but tore my room apart trying to track down the sound while I sat and kept calling the phone. (I had to hang up when voice mail answered and start over.)

The two of them looked through every drawer, even ones Jerry would have no reason to put anything in, and my daughter was saying we’d probably have to clean under our bed when my son figured out the sound seemed to be coming from behind the bookcase.

The only thing behind the bookcase is the hall closet. So they left my room and opened it, thinking it’d be on top the towels or something where it would make sense for him to misplace it.

Not so easy.

Several calls later my daughter finally found it, buried in a pile of old magazines on an upper shelf that hasn’t been moved in years.

Somehow, I don’t think that was accidental or absentmindedness. Do you?