CELL MATE

CELL MATE

It’s not easy being Dick Wolfsie’s cell phone. He’s misplaced me 72 times just in the past 18 months. Of course, I was never really lost. I knew exactly where I was, but have you ever tried to get this guy’s attention?

I’m also all chewed up because his destructive dog likes to gnaw on my corners. I’ve become a cellular cookie, a mobile meatloaf, if you will. It’s not a job I’d call home about. Next time, no pets. 

Here’s my story: On Sunday, I’m at the Shrine Circus at the Fairgrounds where Dick is doing a TV show. I’m in his pocket. No, now I’m resting on top of a clown cannon. Oops! He just shoved me under his coat on a chair. I’m lost. He starts looking all over for me. Now he’s borrowing a phone. He’s going to call me. Uh oh, my battery is running low. I ring. Success.

We’re headed home. He just throws me in his briefcase and I land in a tiny hidden pocket next to a health insurance card that has been missing for the last month. He’ll never find me here. I can just peek out the tattered corner of the leather bag and see him.

Monday: I’m still in this briefcase, but he doesn’t know I am missing because he never left the house all day and most calls go to his regular phone. It’s really dark in here.

Tuesday: He’s looking for me. He’s checking every coat pocket....Oh, here he comes toward his briefcase. He peers into the abyss, but he can’t see me. Call me! Call me before it’s too late! He heads for his desk phone. I go right to voicemail. My battery is dead.

Wednesday: He heads back to the Fairgrounds to see if he left the phone there. I’m right next to him in his briefcase. Oh, the irony. No, they didn’t find a cell phone at the Circus. Back home, he searches the entire car, including where I once slid under one of the floor mats. The rest of the day he looks everywhere, including in his briefcase four more times. Boy could I use a charge.

Thursday: He’s given up. We head to the cell phone store. Time to buy a replacement. His contract is almost expired so they make him a deal on a sexy new model with a lot of features so he can get email he’ll never learn how to access, and take countless accidental pictures of his ear. He falls for it. Men! The salesperson destroys me digitally on the computer. I am cellular non grata.

Dick gets back in the car and we head home. Once in the house, he starts reading the new instruction booklet. He’s confused and frustrated. He has underestimated the power of familiarity. He’s starts pushing buttons wildly. He hasn’t had this look on his face since he bought a new toaster.

Suddenly, a flash of insight. He stares at his briefcase. He walks over and turns it completely upside down and shakes it. Out I fall. Also his insurance card. And a set of keys from his last car and his sister’s Happy 55^th Birthday card. (She’s 57 now.)

He embraces me and kisses my mangled corners.

Friday: We head back to the phone store. He tells the clerk he doesn’t want his new phone, that he’ll eat the cost. He just wants his old friend back. My circuits well up.

“Okay,” says the perplexed customer service rep, “but keep the new phone, just in case you lose the old one again.”

“Yeah,” says Dick, “like that would ever happen.”