A Phone and a Ping

Phones are great, aren’t they? Until they’re not. And they’re not anywhere to be found.

Of course I’m talking about iPhones or whatever you call them or whatever you use.

Let’s go back 75 years to the days when our families would actually listen in to neighboring friends and relatives if they happened to be in the same jurisdiction of phones. If you were polite in those days, you didn’t listen in, but if you were really nosey and curious you might listen in.

Or perhaps you are just a might older than me and my husband, and you might be using a Jitterbug for your phone. That’s fine. They have their purpose for sure. I’m not quite of that generation and frankly I don’t know how to use a Jitterbug at this point.

Anyway, last night my husband and I were out looking for this regular iPhone that was not anywhere to be found. This has happened to both me and my husband when our phones simply disappeared. (Or we left them in weird places.) You know?

And the next generation–our daughters–came to the rescue. They all live two to six hours away. Well, you don’t depend on kids to show up at 8 o-clock in the evening when they’ve had a long day working and maybe, just maybe they might have gotten all their kids into bed already and were hoping for a little bliss.

However, you might be able to do what we did and launched kind of an SOS to our daughters for ideas or help they might provide. Our daughters have varying types of phone service.

And it was almost a miracle, or at least it felt like that to our older generation.

My husband hadn’t turned his phone back on after church and had forgotten that it was off.

So on Monday as we looked around at places where he might have lost or dropped it, we were bewildered and wondering because he had also mowed the lawn that afternoon and had his phone in his pocket but we couldn’t find it anywhere, including on a neighbor’s property.

Our oldest daughter texted “Isn’t there some kind of ‘locate my phone’ thing if you have an Apple phone? It’s an app that finds the location of your phone so you can go to the general area.”

Our youngest daughter texted, “I might have access. Hold on …”

Our middle daughter not only texted, but send a message and photo on my phone marking the territory Stuart’s phone was in and she said “Dad, it looks like your phone might be in the front yard? This is a map of both mom and dad’s phone location, in proximity to your house.”

We got more excited. Oldest daughter texted, “Looks like it might be near the red bud tree maybe?”

Youngest daughter explained, “I was on Mom’s phone with them for a bit and they were walking all over out there looking … I don’t know how accurate the access was with only two devices pinging … “

Oldest daughter added, “Well, it will probably be better to try it in daylight, but at least they know it’s on the property somewhere.”

Then they suggested that I send our list of numbers and pin numbers that we keep in a small journal. So I photographed my list and sent it to them. Youngest daughter’s husband had also gotten involved, with his wonderful insights from his own computer work.

All of sudden, miracle of miracles, our middle daughter proclaimed “The phone has been found! We were able to ping the ringer.” Her husband suggested that we look in the car.

We scrambled to it! We had earlier looked in the car, for sure, but it had not been found. It was under the car seat cover in the car!

Halleluiah.

The texts came back: Youngest daughter “Oh good!!!!”

Oldest daughter: “Amazing! I’m so glad you guys have that load off your mind.”

Middle daughter: “Technology is pretty helpful sometimes!”

Youngest daughter: “Thank you so much, Tanya and Jon.”

Oldest daughter: “Yes, thank you for helping them.”

Middle daughter: “Glad we could help!”

And, belatedly, I added, “We will be able to sleep tonight. Thanks to all of you.”

And we both slept as good of night as we’ve had in awhile!

And I’m shaking in my gut, crying a little, because I’m still so thankful and happy that we were able to jump this hurdle without a cost and with much appreciation for our wonderful and loving daughters that we love so much.

Don’t be afraid to do a ping, if you can figure out how!

Have you lost or looked for a phone–of any kind? What were your results?

I would love to hear your stories!