Mom, I Can't Find My Phone!

As we were getting ready to leave my parents' house in Michigan two weeks ago, my oldest son announced that he couldn't find his phone.  We spent the next forty minutes searching the entire house for his phone.  We pulled cushions off of chairs.  We pulled the couches back and searched between the cracks.  We looked under tables, riffled through magazines, and scanned every surface.

"Think!" I said to him. "Where was the last place you can remember using the phone?"  He insisted that he was positive that he left it in the family room.

My mom is a neat freak.  We should have spotted that phone within minutes.  I was becoming more frustrated by the minute.  The longer we waited to leave Michigan, the longer we would sit in traffic near the Indiana border.

"Let me call his phone!" said my middle kid, Lauren.  A good idea, except that David is deaf, so his phone is set to vibrate for text messages.  "Well, maybe we can feel the vibrations," she said, hopefully.

It was futile.

"Go check in the boat and go look outside," I barked at David.

"Mom, come on, I know I didn't take it out there!"

"I don't care, go look."

I sent the other two kids upstairs to look in the bedrooms.  We made the rounds again.  Rummaged through our bags, the newspapers, the wet beach towels.  We looked through things like the candy dish, an eyeglass case, the camera case...

Nothing.

We headed for home and David managed to get through two weeks of school without his phone.  We played the delicate dance of communication each morning to make sure all the bases were covered with sports and transportation.

We found the phone, my sister emailed me.  In the bedroom upstairs, wedged between the chair cushions.

So yesterday afternoon, my sister stopped in and brought David's phone.  David spent the afternoon happily texting his friends and playing catch up.  I went through a long spiel about responsibility and how to take care of a phone.

"I don't ever want to have to go searching for a phone again!" I warned.

We had a party that afternoon and watched the Bears with a bunch of friends.  After the last family left, I noticed my daughter looking around.

"I can't find my phone," she said.

I groaned.  Here we go again, I thought to myself.

"I am not looking for your phone," I announced.  "It's your responsibility and you have to stop leaving it all over the place.  If you would just keep your phone on the counter, you'd find it every time!"

She searched her room, looked under pillows and shifted through some paper piles in my office.  It was finally found-- hidden under her backpack which was tossed on the hallway bench.

"Ok, now can you please stop leaving your phone all over the place?" I pleaded.

When the kids were finally in bed, I was getting ready to head upstairs when the kitchen phone light began blinking.  It was my friend Sharon, calling through a relay service.  She wanted to know if we were meeting the next day and apparently she had been frantically trying to get a hold of me by texting my cell phone.

The problem was, I couldn't find it.

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post.  Karen blogs at A Deaf Mom Shares Her World and is a feature writer for Disaboom.