Land of Lost Cell Phones

The other night I was sitting at a birthday dinner when my cell phone rang. I glanced at it quickly and saw that it was someone I knew. But when I answered, the voice on the other end was not one I recognized. He had an accent that the person whose name was on the caller id did not have. The man said something that sounded like "I'm calling you from your cell phone." I jumped a little--how could he be calling me from my cell phone when I was using my cell phone?

An unexpected phone call from a strange man with a foreign accent? Doesn't that have all the makings of an exciting story? Sorry to disappoint, but in this novel that is my life, things like this often turn out to be quirky, annoying, or nothing at all.

His command of English was less than great: he'd found my friend's cell phone and called my number because it was the last call received. Then I called some other friends to see if they knew how to find this cell phone-less person.(Because of course I didn't know his home phone number and he later told me that he has no land line.) They didn't and I ended up using my morse code typing to send him an e-mail on someone else's cell phone. (This person actually has 2 cell phones, but it was really hard to type on his iPhone, so I went for the old-fashioned version.)

As it turns out the cell phone finder lives in the same building my friend who lost his cell phone.

And then on Sunday, I ran into another friend who had also lost her cell phone. She was fairly certain that she'd lost it is NoVa. She had the service turned off and speculated that had she lost it Maryland or DC, someone would have gone crazy with it. I told that just the say before a friend of mine had lost a phone in Maryland and that someone found it, called me and intended to return it. She was very surprised to hear of such honesty in Maryland.

Of course when she said Maryland, she probably meant PG County. And I didn't mention that my friend's lost cell phone was lost and found in Rockville...

No doubt some areas have more crime than others, but thieves and opportunities to do good abound everywhere.