Senior Moment? Sez Who?

I lost this phone a year ago.       


I lost another one (or two?) after that so what’s the big deal?

Well, here’s a tale of grace you will never believe, but I’ll tell you anyway.

This time last year, before I turned in, I prepared my bags for school. As my last act every night, I turned off my cell phone (a horrendous habit, Tony kept saying under his breath). The next day, I was so sure I put my cell phone in my bag. But in the car, when I wanted to make a call, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in my brief case either.

“I could call your number but you won’t be able to hear it because it’s off,” Tony remarked, making the obvious more redundant.

As soon as I got back home, my househelps and I turned the whole house upside down. No phone. So I got a new one and again I lost that one, but that’s a whole new story.

One year later, to the day, my friend Yay (a co-teacher) calls, “I found your old cell phone!”

“Where? How? Why? When?”

“I was going through my cabinet looking for clothes for our church’s rummage sale and I found your phone in a plastic bag with my pink gown.”

“The pink gown you lent me?” I ask. A year ago, I was invited to be a wedding sponsor . . . I needed a pink gown . . . Yay volunteered to lend me her gown so I need not have one made . . . I couldn’t fit into it even after skipping a meal . . . so I returned it the next day . . . the day I lost my cell phone!

“Yes, that gown,” she confirms.

“You mean you never took that gown out of the plastic bag?!”

“Hahaha!” I find it a waste of time to organize my cabinets!” (That’s what makes Yay a great friend, she’s a kindred spirit.)

“I must have put my cell phone in that plastic bag instead of my bag (?)” I say, trying to remember but failing.

“How else could it have landed there? Senior moment, Grace, hahaha! I will leave it in your pigeon hole in school tomorrow,” she replies.

Tomorrow comes and I dash to my pigeon hole. My cell phone isn't there.

I meet Yay in the corridor an hour later. “So where is my old cell phone!”

“Oh, gosh, I forgot all about it! I left it at home.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh, “Senior moment, hahaha!”

Today I suddenly have two cell phones (the prodigal one and the one I inherited from my son), both the cheapest you can find in stores—if you can still find them. I often leave them around, anywhere, but they don't get stolen. One time a waiter ran after me, waving my cell phone, “Ma’am, you left this!”

I drool over those thin, sleek phones with magical functions beyond texting and calling, but two big boys keep count, “How many cell phones have you lost, mom?”

I stay quiet, hoping they don’t find out about those missing reading glasses. Uuuh, but those are other tales of grace.