After one of the longest four-day weeks in recent memory, I managed to get away from work nearly on time. I pounded out a txt on my way to the parking lot, put my bag on top of the truck bed cover, sat my phone down beside it, and tossed my coat in the back seat because I hate driving with my coat on. The bag is tossed in next, I settle in to the driver’s seat and I’m off to start a week and a half of vacation time.

You might have noticed that I didn’t mention picking my phone up. Well that’s because I apparently didn’t. Of course I didn’t know this as I pulled out of the parking lot, drive through the gate, and made best possible speed for the house. I only realized this ten minutes later when I reached down to grab it off my belt clip. There was the clip sure enough, but the phone was ominously missing. I reach behind me, thinking it probably had just popped out of the clip or maybe slid between the seat and center console. No dice there. Not paniced yet, I pulled my coat over the seat and rummaged through the pockets. Sill no phone. It wasn’t in its usual spot on the center console either. This is where the dread starts setting in. I pull to the shoulder, check under the seats, check my coat again, and actually check every place a phone could possibly end up. It, of course, was in none of these places.

So now I backtrack to the office. No one has turned in anything to the gate guard and it’s not lying in or near the parking lot. It’s not lying anywhere inside the fenceline for that matter. I scouted that area pretty well. It’s not outside the gate where I would have made my first quick acceleration. It’s not at the exit where I turned onto the highway. By now it has begun dawning on me that I’m not likely to find it. In a shower of curses not often heard from me, I admitted defeat and accepted that my phone was lost, damaged, or destroyed.

So yes, my pretty and still relatively new 16 gig iPhone is now officially listed as missing in action. I only hope that flying off the back of a fast moving truck damaged it beyond repair because the thought of some schlep using my phone as a high powered iPod makes me crazy at the moment.

I’ve switched over to a back up phone and my number still works, so all told I was off the grid for about three hours. Three absolutely terrifying hours.