Lost in the Snow {#Project 365–Day 49}

This is a picture of my trusty Samsung smart phone. It contains pretty much all the things I need on the road. Phone numbers and addresses of family and friends, photographs, emails, the Social Network stuff. It’s always by my side from the moment I go to bed at night to the moment it wakes me up in the mornings and provides me with the first news. On a side note, in the mornings I gather news as if I was a contender in the Presidential Election.

I read Twitter, then check N24’s, The Guardian’s, the Washington Post’s, Spiegel Online’s, Stern’s and the Irish “Independent’s” apps for the latest news. (Is it any wonder I have to get up about 45 minutes before my husband?) Then I head into the kitchen to make breakfast, on the way there I turn on the TV, where I watch not one but two News magazines back to back while sipping my coffee. Luckily for my sleeping rhythm I currently don’t have a daily paper but I will again very soon. This should be interesting but I digress.

What I was trying to say is that I have come to heavily depend on my smartphone and being without it makes me feel almost naked. Not that I’d have a problem being naked – after all, I am East German :)

Where was I? Oh yes, the phone. Listen to this. Last Saturday we went to a friend’s house and as this was a spontaneous visit, the four of us decided to order Pizza. When we called the Pizza place though, they told us it would take at least an hour to have it delivered. So the four of us agreed that we might as well go and pick it up. So we did. I grabbed my phone from the table and put it into my coat pocket and we were out the door. It was freeeeeeeezing cold that night. 15°F to be exact. So the guys decide to head into the Pizza joint to pick up our dinner while the girls were to remain in the cozy car. We were sitting there for about two minutes when a car wanted to drive past us, out of a driveway but couldn’t because a gigantic pile of snow was in its way. So I got out, ran around the car and moved it so the other car could pass. It was then that I reached into my coat’s pocket and said out loud to my friend, hmm I wonder, did I leave my phone at home? Then the men got into the car and we drive home. When we settle at the table I notice that my phone isn’t there.

Naturally I am freaking out but the hubby, who at this point is beyond hungry, calms me down by saying that it probably fell out of my pocket and into the car seat. He goes to check but it isn’t there. By now I no longer care about the food. I have hot and cold flashes. This is my private phone. All my data, all my photos (okay I have backups but you don’t want a stranger finding photos of you and the hubby hugging a scared looking cat in bed – it’s a long story...) and it didn’t come for free either.

I don’t use a screensaver on my private phone because I always thought, what the heck, I have it with me all the time. Who will get their hands on it? To top it all off it seems that I am too lazy to enter a four digit pin or draw a simple pattern to unlock a screen. Serves me well. I’m in panic mode now and the hubby still sits there calmly chewing down his Pizza. When he sees how pissed I am though, he jumps up and we drive back to the Pizza joint and when we get near to where we were parked in the first place I scream for him to hit the breaks because there, in the very busy driveway, I see my phone, lying screen down in the snow. By now 90 minutes have passed and I jump out of the car and go running towards it. All the while hoping against hope that nobody drove over it and/or it did not die lying facedown in the snow in 5°F... I scoop it up and it looks intact. Not a scratch. It responds a bit slow to my touch but it seems all is good. I turn it off and keep it in my hand like a bird with a broken wing until we return to our home that night. I am too scared to turn it on so I wait till the next morning and there, it works. It WORKS. What a relief. I immediately secure my phone with a screen lock and hope that I will not ever have to go through that scare again.