It was Monday morning when I fell off the grid.
I’d gotten our kids off to school, gassed up my car and done an interview when I realized I had gone hours — three whole ones — without any phone calls or texts, in or out. It seemed like an appendage was gone. My cellphone was missing.
I borrowed somebody else’s and called myself. No answer.
Again, I dialed inside my car, hoping my trusty Motorola Q would ring under the pile of paper airplanes and skateboard pads on my passenger’s seat. No answer.
I backtracked. First to the gas station to see if I’d forgotten it on top of the pump. Then back to school, where I figured I might have left it along with my kids’ sweat shirts or water bottles.
“Do you belong there?” asked a student, suspicious as I searched one son’s cubby.
“I’m a mom. I lost my cellphone,” I told him, unzipping backpack pockets.
“No cellphones at school,” he said, accusingly.
I started to panic.
Rushing home, I reminded myself that it was just a phone — a worn-out, 3-year-old model with the A, Q and “function” buttons missing from its keypad. People lose things far more important than personal electronics, I told myself. Like their health. And their grounding. “Dad, Nothing Matters. We Love You A Lot. Please Come Home,” read a sign posted over the weekend on McClure Pass.
At home, I dialed my number again as I checked places like my bathrobe pocket and the basket where we put newspapers. I checked the garden. I checked our bed. I even checked the butter compartment in the refrigerator, where I’d recently found a key piece from a Lego set. No answer.
My panic turned to loss.
Gone is my familiar ring tone (“standard”) and text-message alert (“echo”). Gone are the photos I snapped over Labor Day of a canvas tote bag packed with sunscreen and floaties at an Eagle County pool; “Property of Denver DA,” read the embroidery. Gone is my background image of our family at Water World.
Within hours, loss turned to dread of dealing with the phone carrier, the cellphone store and the time it would take to learn to use a smartphone for which I fear I may not be smart enough. I also dreaded the “I told you so’s” from my husband the iPhone user who has been urging me to switch for two years.
I’m the Luddite in the family, jumping at every chance to tell our boys that people live contentedly without apps. They don’t believe a word of it. Still, low tech has its conveniences. Neither kid has ever used my cellphone as a virtual light saber. And neither has run off with it to play “Atomic Fart.”
I write this on a Wi-Fi’d computer with a land line at close reach. I’ve alerted all two people who’d need to know that I’m without a cell. I’m as connected as necessary for the moment, and far better wired than my parents or their parents ever imagined we’d be.
I’ll give myself a week lost in space without a cellphone. Meantime, I’ll keep dialing my number, calling myself and hoping that someone picks up.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com
