A guest post by DD
A close circle of friends and family thought I’d died from a gardening-induced heart attack on Saturday afternoon.
The truth was much less dramatic … I’d accidentally left home without my phone and experienced some Murphy’s Law events.
Here’s what was my Saturday was supposed to look like: overdue gardening in the morning, including pruning the bamboo, depositing the green waste at Kimbriki, heading into town for replacement ebike shopping with my daughter and then spend the evening with Ms HouseGoesHome.
The gardening went to plan and my Garmin watch told me I had burnt over 600 active calories, so I sent the following innocent text to Ms HouseGoesHome: “Gardening was quite the workout – more calories than an actual workout”.
Then I had a shower, quickly packed an overnight bag and headed out. I made it to Kimbriki in record time despite the rain and felt very pleased with myself for being so efficient. Once I was back on Mona Vale Road I asked Siri to text my daughter that I was running a few minutes late. But there was no Siri … and that’s when I realised my phone must be back at my house.
It was 2:30pm at that point and the bike shop closed at 4pm. After a quick internal debate over whether to go home and get the phone or forge ahead without it, I decided I’d just head into town, sort out the e-bike (I had my credit cards with me) and then retrieve my phone and head to Ms HouseGoesHome’s place …
Well, it seemed a good idea at the time.
As I drove into the city, trying unsuccessfully to remember my daughter’s mobile number, the rain poured down, the traffic slowed and I navigated various incidents including an accident on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
My (misguided) thinking was that my daughter would simply wait for me at her work, but when I arrived everything was locked up. Damn. We had missed each other by 10 minutes.
I drove to my kids’ apartment, hoping my son would be there so I could access a phone. That took another 20 minutes.
I had forgotten that I share my phone’s location with my daughter, who’d been calling me repeatedly. When I didn’t answer or reply, she checked and could see that I appeared to be home and had not moved for around two hours – creating visions of me collapsed on my bedroom floor.
As she left work to be with a friend (as she didn’t want to be alone in case I had expired) – she called my son who in turn called Ms HouseGoesHome, who in turn called my sister and my neighbour Gav in the search for me.
No one knew where I was. Given my “location” was at home, my son called another neighbour (Ben) who kindly came down to assess the potentially fatal situation … and to his relief he found my phone in my jeans in my bedroom (sorry about the mess Ben) and left it on the kitchen bench.
By that point 30 minutes had elapsed between my daughter leaving work and me arriving at my son’s apartment. He opened the front door with a big smile and said “a lot of people thought you were dead”.
I think Telstra experienced quite the data spike on the North Shore from all the frenzied calling.
In response, I spent 15 minutes using his phone to call all involved parties to reassure them I was still very much alive (although rather tired from gardening).
I spent the drive home reflecting on how indispensable mobile phones are now – they’re essentially extensions of ourselves. And how we rely on the them for simply everything … quite the change from my childhood with a non-mobile, non-smart rotary dial phone stuck very firmly in the hallway. How did we survive?
Once home and reunited with my iPhone 15 I sent a few apologetic thank-you texts including to my neighbour Ben, who replied: “Please don’t do that again. I was very calm until I arrived at yours to find Gav also pacing around on the phone to Alana. Then the anxiety kicked in”
Sorry everyone – I promise not to leave home without my phone again! But I must admit I felt very loved! And I luvs yas all back.
Song of the day: Blondie “Hanging on the telephone”
housegoeshome 
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