Lost: Phone

Last Saturday we all went to Maddie's dance class, then as we were leaving I realized I lost my sunglasses.  Cathy agreed to get the kids in the car while I went in to find them.  While I was inside I missed a call from Cathy -- as it turns out, Maddie found my glasses on top of the stroller.  Who cares right?   Well, that was the last time Cathy's phone was used for the next 7 hours.

At the time, I wasn't too concerned -- I had a good feeling the phone would turn up.  So after a round of errands we pulled up to our house and Maddie and Dylan were out cold in the car.  Cathy went inside to search while I dialed repeatedly -- no answer.  At this point, even I was starting to believe that the phone was history.  Within an hour both kids cheerfully awoke and I went inside -- from there I provided assistance on the search that now surpassed the one hour mark. 

We started to backtrack the day to the last phone usage, which brought us back to the sunglasses call.  Perhaps Cathy left it on the bumper after the call, then put the kids in the car and drove off -- leaving it on the pavement for a car to steamroll?  After 1.5 hours of searching we were beginning to think that this scenario was indeed a reality -- which caused the mood of the household to go from moderate to sour.  Fortunately, it was time for a coffee and Cathy decided to make the trip (get some fresh air) and to get to that final stage of -- Acceptance, that yes, the phone has been mowed over by another car and is now in 100s of pieces.  I was at Acceptance 30 minutes prior -- however that's my nature, worst case scenario. 

So I made the kids dinner and while they were peacefully eating -- decided to give it one last search.  I dialed her phone and lifted the garbage can lid.............  and thought I heard something.  Could it be?  I dialed again and this time was positive that something was vibrating in the trash.  Piece by piece I sorted through the garbage until I unveiled the missing phone!  Cathy returned to a happy house and Madison delivered the great news!  Turns out, upon our return from dance class, Cathy gave Dylan the phone to play with while she prepared lunch.  From there the phone made its way to the next obvious place -- the garbage can.

I bet your wondering why I mentioned the purpose of Cathy's last call on that day.  Recall that I returned inside to find my sunglasses -- so it was a blunder on my part that kicked off the chain of events that led to the sour afternoon -- the butterfly effect.  Blame was never aired in my direction on this eventful day, however I knew where I would have been had I not decided to go garbage picking on my Saturday afternoon.