It takes a Village…to find an iPhone….

“I can’t find my phone this morning. Anybody know where it is?” wrote Daddy on the family email. “Neither Shirley or I can hear well enough to hear the ring when we call it.”

Lost iPhone, a scary problem. I go into panic mode in a hot minute. Have called mine more than once from the house only to have my purse start ringing or buzzing.

Secretly I hoped both that Daddy would find his phone. AND that this would encourage hearing aids for both Mama and Daddy.

Over the next couple of days Daddy’s emails sound increasingly panicked. We don’t talk live because Daddy can’t hear the house phone either.

“What model is it?” asks my nephew Devin. From 100 miles away he activates “Find My iPhone.”

Whew. The phone is somewhere in the house. My sister Sabrina, 100 miles in another direction, plans to visit and help search, but can’t come for another day.

How full was his phone battery? Unclear.

“I have been moaning and groaning to everybody today about the lost phone,” wrote Daddy.   “At the auto shop where I was getting our farm eggs the woman asked our address.   She said ‘I’ll find it.   I’m very good at finding lost phones.’  She was going to meet me at our house in a few minutes.  I didn’t invite her.   She just said she was coming.

“Shirley was NOT HAPPY that I had invited some “strange woman” to our house!   Not happy at all!!  But Shirley knows the woman.   Wife of our mechanic.   Mother of the little girl I give baby chicks to each spring and buy our little farm fresh eggs.

Devin is on standby to activate “Find my Phone.”

“Ryvonne looked around my garden, around the family room and kitchen.   Checked briefly upstairs.   Went our front and came right back in with a big smile and I knew she had found it.   She said she hadn’t found it, but that she knew where it was and took me outside.

“The beeper was coming from inside our recycle barrel!    I have no idea how I managed to get the phone mixed up with the recycle stuff!   But there in the bottom of the barrel below 1/2 the container of old papers, was my phone.   And it was still 1/2 charged.”

A happy ending….and good thing she came before the recycling was picked up.

I was curious about the lesson(s) that would be derived here.

Get hearing aids?

Back up the phone?

Sort the recycling before swooping up the magazines?

So far, the one life lesson I’ve heard:

“We have wonderful people to help us out with a problem like this!”

Not  a peep about hearing aids.