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Cheryl Hughes: To The Cloud

My Career As A Woman

Have you ever lost your cell phone?  If you haven’t, I advise against it, especially if you’re one of those negligent people like I am, and you don’t back up your contact list and pictures on your computer—or icloud in the case of an iphone.  I strongly advise against it if you are a stupid person like I was—I’m getting brighter by the day—and you do not keep your “find my phone” app turned on.
I did this—lost my iphone—the day before I was to leave for New Orleans to help my daughter, Nikki, shop for a wedding dress. 
    Losing my cell phone was one of the most stressful situations I’ve ever found myself in, and not for the reasons you might think.  Yes, it was inconvenient to lose my contact information; I had personal, business and customer contacts that will be hard to access otherwise.  It was inconvenient to lose the apps I use on a daily basis, but I can reload apps.  I really hate the idea of having to buy a new phone outright without the buffer of the discount AT&T gives me with a contract—mine’s not up for renewal—but I can put iphone at the top of my Christmas list, and hope my family pools their resources for my gift. 
All the afore mentioned reasons were stressful, but none was as sinking as the realization that I had lost pictures I can never replace.   The picture of my granddaughter dressed in my dining room curtains, posing by the red Christmas tree she refuses to take down, the video of her playing with the new Beagle puppy, the picture of her sticking her little face out of the hatch I cut in the cardboard rocket ship we built together, these were pictures no other members of my family carried on their phones. 
I tried finding my phone the night I realized I had lost it.  The last place I remembered using it was in Walmart, by the Innotab game systems.  I texted my daughter, Natalie, about buying the Sponge Bob game for my granddaughter, Sabria, who was with me.  I don’t remember having it after that.  When my husband, Garey, got home from work, about five, I drove back to Bowling Green, parked in the same row I had earlier, and looked around in the parking lot to see if maybe I had dropped it in that area.
It was nowhere to be seen, so I retraced my steps in the store.  I looked on all the shelves by the game systems—even got down on the floor and looked under the shelves—I looked around and under the lighted Christmas trees we had stopped to admire, I looked in the lettuce and broccoli bins and around and through the meat counters.  I walked over to the self-checkout I had used and thoroughly checked the area then I went to customer service, but it was as I suspected, no one had turned in a lost iphone.
Coming from a long line of people who insist on beating a dead horse, when I returned home, I uploaded Garey’s data to the icloud then tried the whole invite-my-phone-to-be-part-of-his-cloud process, so I could pinpoint where my phone was.  It didn’t work, of course, because my “find my phone” app wasn’t turned on.  The Google map showed two blinking dots on Woodbury Loop, pinpointing Garey’s phone and Natalie’s phone, but not my missing phone.
I contacted AT&T and had my phone temporarily suspended then packed my clothes for New Orleans and spent a very wrestles night with very little sleep.  The next morning, I found the number for Apple support, and actually got through to a real person.  After a series of questions, all to which I answered no, she said, “I’m sorry, honey, but your phone is gone.”
Garey found his old iphone—he keeps everything—and we drove in to the AT&T store where   they pulled the plug on my old phone then powered up the new old phone.  “It’s dead,” the tech guy said, referring to my lost phone, “Whoever has it, can’t use it.” 
There was some sense of satisfaction in knowing the thief was probably cut off in mid-sentence.  I knew, however, my phone would probably be sold to one of those sites that buy and resale used iphones or maybe its fate would go the more sinister path to a chop shop, where it would be parted out, like my brother’s Iroc Camaro, stolen in the eighties. 
If I could have contacted the thief with the “find my phone” app—that wasn’t turned on—I would have said, “Look, you can have the phone, just send my pictures and videos to a secure icloud site.  I’ll even do you one better.  Choose a carrier and a plan, and your first month is on me.”
I couldn’t contact the thief, however.  I had to face the fact that some lost things are lost forever.  You know the thing I really hate about lessons learned?  The ones that teach you most are the ones you can’t fix.

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