Reach
Down and Touch Someone
 This
past weekend I was on one of my typically
long neighborhood walks when I spied a
cell phone
battery up against the curb.
A few feet farther down the street was
the back cover of a cell phone. Not far
from that lay the naked guts of cell
phone.
"Hey!" my brain said, "I
think this is someone's cell phone." On
the vague possibility that my brain was
correct I gathered up
the various pieces of this poor, wounded
creature and then continued on my merry
way.
Once home I reassembled the phone and
cranked it up. It seemed to be work
normally so I tried to solve the mystery
of to whom it belonged. There was nothing
usable in the address
book but a little more snooping
uncovered
its phone number so I called
the provider, T-Mobile, to see if they
could help.
After a short-ish wait a representative
came on the line, a very engaging young
woman whose soul had yet to be
sucked dry by the rigors of call support.
After
I told her why I was calling there was
a short
pause,
at which
point she sort of went berserk. In a good
way, though.
It seems that trying to return
a cell phone to its
owner
is
a much rarer occurrence than I'd ever have
imagined, which explained why my boundlessly
perky phone representative was
acting
as though I'd found the Lindbergh baby,
or single-handedly overturned Citizens
United.
Her breathless delight was so rapturous
I wasn't
sure
if I'd
called customer support
or
Dial-A-Hot-Mama.
I was several steps into planning our
honeymoon when the identity of the rightful
owner was divulged and the merriment came
to
an
abrupt halt.
A short time later he arrived and picked
up his lost treasure, explaining that his
young son had tossed it from the car earlier
that afternoon.
You're probably thinking "Why didn't
the little liberal feeb keep it for himself?" Perhaps
I'm unfashionably old-fashioned but I couldn't
imagine keeping
someone's
cell
phone as
it's a very personal item, like a purse
or a hairbrush or a fleshlight. Besides,
I'd certainly want
my phone returned if ever it went
astray. Wouldn't you?
Now if you'll pardon me I have to go look
for more lost phones.
---------------
After having re-read my
story it occurs to me that it would be
prudent to make it as easy as possible
for someone to return my
phone
should I
ever
misplace
it. So I added the following image to the
opening screen:
At the very least, it implies ownership
and might actually guilt the finder into
returning it should they waver in their
moral responsibility. It also helps to
have the kind of crappy phone no one in
their right mind would ever want to keep
for themselves, just one step up from a
Morse code device that also functions
as
an Aldiss
lamp.
=Lefty=
|
