My Boomeranging Cell Phone

Thursday, on the way to school, I decided to take a taxi. I usually enjoy taking buses, but I was bored with them, which is not a new thing. I have been bored with them for a while. Recently I have taken to getting off the bus about four stops early and walking through the street market area, as it is much more interesting than completing the ride. But Thursday I just wanted to take a taxi direct to school, and I can afford it as there isn't a huge difference in price, $1 for a bus vs. about $3.50 for a taxi.

I got into the taxi, told the driver where I wanted to go (always a pause there as I wait to see if they can understand my horribly accented Korean), and then noticed that I didn't seem to have my cell phone with me. Oops. The beginnings of gloom.

I searched through my pockets and my daypack for my phone but couldn't find it. I looked again. No phone.

I realized that I must have left it in my apartment.

Later that night, after I got home from work, I looked for my phone in my apartment. No phone. The gloom deepened.

I searched more thoroughly, yet still couldn't find it. So, for the first time since I have been here, 10 months or thereabouts, I used my landline; I pressed the buttons for my cell number, put the receiver down, and walked around my small apartment, expecting to hear that familiar buzzing sound. No buzzing sound.

I picked the receiver back up and listened to see if it was still ringing. Static. Hesitantly, I said, "Hello?"

A Korean voice answered me.

Oh shit! I hung up, overwhelmed at the thought of trying to communicate the obvious: I had lost my phone and someone else had it. Shit!

Now, let me clarify my status as a moronic loser of cell phones. I have done it before. That's why I say I'm a moron. It doesn't matter that it has been two years since the last incident of losing my cell phone in Korea, or the fact that I did so in a taxi, or the fact that I got it back. What matters is that I had apparently done it again.

And what's really moronic is that I had lost it not once, but twice before. Yes, I had left my cell phone--same one--in a taxi two times before, and had gotten it back both times. And now, it seemed, I had done it again. Moron to the 3rd power.

I worried all that night and the next day, until I got to work and asked my Korean employer to try calling my cellphone number. He did so and talked with a man who had it (apparently the taxi driver).

The driver was kind enough to bring it by the school later that day. I was teaching but asked my boss to give him $10 for his kindness; it's an old phone, but useful.

So I got it back, the amazing boomeranging cell phone.

I think that the next time I get into a taxi with my phone I need to superglue it to my forehead.

I'm a moron, but a lucky one.