An Idiot With an iPhone

There are occasionally events that demonstrate without doubt that I’m an idiot. Such was the phone call to my mother this afternoon. I try to call my mother, now in her mid-80s, every two or three weeks, to keep her up on how her wayward semi-retired son is somehow surviving. For the past couple of years, since my wife got me a cellphone and we disconnected our land phone’s long distance, I’ve phoned my mother on my cellphone. It’s about the only phone call I make. I don’t use my phone as a phone. I use the calendar, I check the weather, when I’m away from home and my laptop I check my email and use the iPad. But I seldom have reason to make a phone call, and there are precious few people in the world who ever call me.

So as I was talking with my mother today, I glanced from my chair to the side-table where my phone usually sits and noticed that my phone wasn’t where it always is. I got up and checked my pocket. Before my call I’d been to the store, and when I ever go out I take my phone with me, just in case I may need to make some emergency call (which I’ve not had to do in three years), and I put it in my pocket. But it wasn’t there. I walked to the table where I keep my sunglasses and checkbook, but the phone wasn’t there either. My wife came through the room, and I said to both her and my mother, “I’ve lost my phone.” And in that instant I realized I was holding my phone up to my ear, talking with my mother. My wife rolled her eyes, just one more speed bump on the way to widowhood. My mother didn’t say anything. But then she’s had 63 years of suffering an idiot for a son.