When most folks lose socks, they're not given to a conniption.
Same with pens. And hairbrushes. And magazines.
It may be annoying when these items part company with their owners, but it's scarcely an end-of-world issue.
That would apply to something else.
There was the husband, two weeks ago. He'd lost something, and it happened not to be a sock, a magazine or a coffee cup, red or otherwise.
"This is crazy!!!" he panted. "I think I've lost my phone!" Ah yes, the dreaded missing phone conundrum.
Make that: the dreaded missing phone crisis.
To most of us, after all, a phone is like an appendage. It may not be attached, but it might as well be.
The husband was clearly distraught. He looked in his jacket. He looked in his briefcase. He looked in his office.
Nothing. "Phone your phone," I suggested.
The husband did just that. The missing appendage may have been ringing somewhere, but not where we could hear it.
Bizarre. It wasn't so long ago, really, when this never, ever happened. Like most folks, the husband and I did not carry a phone wherever we went. We carried car keys. We carried wallets. We carried umbrellas.
But a phone was something we left in the house when we made our way to work.
Not once did it ever go missing.
Now, however, phones are rather like shoes: you can't leave home without them. I know this, of course, whenever I step outdoors. No matter whether I'm at the park or on the bus or in a restaurant, there they are: the other members of the human race, all clutching their appendages. And should they lose them, well, they'd be more than a little perturbed.
Boggles the mind, really, why no one has yet invented the Cling-Ding-a-Link, a device that ensures a phone is attached - magnetically or magically - to its owner. Forget your cell phone at the pub? No problem! It'll follow you home, three feet behind. you But alas, there's no cling thing, so far as I know. Which leaves us with this: the husband in full-on panic mode.
"Did you check the car?" I wondered.
The husband raced outside and returned two minutes later, lost device in hand.
"Good thought," he said. "Thank you."
He hadn't needed a magical thing. He'd only needed a wife.
