phantom vibrations

My typical packing procedure involves stuffing as many things into a bag as possible. And, as the training week came to a close in Minneapolis, I packed for the return flight in this very way.

Clothes, shoes, books, a bottle of aspirin, and other assorted knick-knacks that were accumulated during the week were all haphazardly stuffed into my suitcase. I struggled with the zipper for a full five minutes before I finally got the bag closed and, once finished, I stood back to admire my work…a suitcase with more lumps than any homemade gravy you’d ever seen.

The zipper was struggling against the sheer perversion of physics which I had just performed…surely no mere zipper could endure the amount of force pressing against it from all the crap that it was expected to contain, yet hold it did. All the way down the elevator, into the plane, and onto the luggage pick-up at the terminal once the flight was over.

Upon getting back home, I unzipped the suitcase and relieved its burden. My unpacking routine, being very similar to my packing routine, consisted of throwing these same (and now wrinkled) clothes into various drawers. The knickknacks were left in the suitcase and tossed into a closet, to be dealt with at a later date.

My packing and unpacking prowess was flawless, and remained flawless until I realized that my cell phone was nowhere to be found. I was certain that it got thrown into my bag at the hotel, though where it could have ended up once I got back home was completely beyond me.

In true sleuthing fashion, I grabbed my land-line phone, dialed my cell phone number, and proceeded to walk around the apartment, listening intently for a clue as to where my missing cell phone might be. This was made more difficult by the fact that I keep my cell phone on ‘vibrate’, having made an unfortunate choice in ring-tones several months back. Having spent $2 on this ring-tone, however, I refuse to replace it with a more normal sounding ring…because this would imply that I wasted $2, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get my monies worth out of the ring-tone that I purchased.

So I walked around for 20 minutes, dialing and redialing my cell phone, carefully listening for the faint sound of buzzing from somewhere within my apartment, all to no avail. Wherever my cell was hiding out, it clearly didn’t want to be found.

And the next day I went phoneless. I felt like a war veteran that lost a limb in battle. And just like these veterans who experience phantom pain in limbs that no longer exist, I kept experiencing phantom vibrations throughout the day, only to reach down and find that no phone was there.

This continued for several days…mysterious phantom buzzing from a phone that wasn’t there. I was positive that I was receiving, and missing, many important calls in my phone’s absence. That call to alert me to the fact that I had won a million dollars was missed. The call from Sarah Michelle Gellar telling me that she loved me was also missed.

It wasn’t until later in the week that the phone was found. Early one morning, as I groggily rooted around in my sock drawer for a clean pair to wear, I stumbled upon something that was neither soft nor sock-like. Confused as to what this hard object could be, I pulled it out and saw that it was my cell phone.

Apparently, in my unpacking frenzy, the phone got mixed and tossed in with the socks. Either that or my low-tech socks decided to wage war on the high-tech gadgets in my apartment by taking the cell phone hostage. Either way, the prodigal cell had returned home.

I plugged it in…for after several days on the lam it had no battery power left…and turned it on, ready to catch up on all those important messages which had been missed. Like a kid on Christmas morning, I was excitedly anticipating what these messages held. Sarah Michelle? Unclaimed fortunes? Six figure a year job offers?

I punched in my pass code and listened as the tinny, Verizon voice told me that I had four new messages. Three of which turned out to be some lady named Fran trying to get me to apply for an American Express card and one from Gary telling me that I could save 20% on a carpet cleaning.

In the future, my cell phone is going to have to fend for itself against the socks.