A car ran over my phone.
This was one notch better than my phone being lost.
The car / phone union came to my attention as I bent over to search under my car and through a sewer grate at this Silicon Valley strip mall.
“Are you Susie?” a guy called across the lot.
He held up my phone like the prize at a county fair. I ran up and threw my arms around him as if 1. I knew him and 2. he had just won a big teddy bear at the county fair.
The screen was crushed. In many places.
“Look it’s all there,” he said, pointing out that my credit card and other stuff I’d stashed in the stick-on pocket in the back, which I later attributed for saving my phone from total demise.
Then my attention returned to the phone. Thankfully it was intact. Note to self: Back up more often!
I hugged him again, and he declined a reward. What a guy.
Tip: How to get your lost phone back
For years, I’ve had a photo of a Google Voice number and “REWARD!” as my lock screen wall paper. It’s ugly but it works.
Was this event an outlier?
Nope! I’ve left my phone in not one but 2 Uber cars.
One was in the Bay Area.
The other was in Mexico. In both cases, I employed the screaming Find iPhone feature and offered a huge reward to the driver. Both time, the drivers told tales of how far they had driven to return my phone.
(It’s also worth knowing that you can easily contact an Uber driver about a lost item with the app. The app connects you directly with the driver.)
Little did the drivers know the Find iPhone feature tells you exactly where your phone is.
This I did not point out to them.
With the Find iPhone feature, you can also post a note on the home screen even if you normally don’t allow messages to show when the phone is locked.
Yes, you need another device to use that feature, whether a friend’s phone, an iPad, computer, etc.
Paying Attention is a Key Secret to Happiness
So now I’ve lost my phone 3 times, and all 3 times gotten it back.
Sure I’m a few hundred dollars poorer due to the rewards and repairs.
From this, I think I’m finally going to pay the attention needed for this not to happen again.
Paying attention to the world around us — our friends, family and strangers, conversations, flowers, unusual circumstances, opportunities, trends…it’s all so important for a rich life.
You might say I’m guilty of not paying enough attention to my phone!
‘Tis an irony that we are warned to not stay so glued to ours phones. These lessons have been a great metaphor for at least making sure my house is in order when it comes to the things I care about.
Even though I still don’t know how I dropped my phone in that damn parking lot.
