Love's Real Stories

A funny thing happened on the way to the Real Estate conference in Reno. I didn’t see it happen, but in my mind’s eye I picture what happened, and I bet I’m right on. 

In my mind’s eye, I see my cell phone sliding off the tailgate of my pickup as I accelerate to about 55 miles per hour on the two-mile stretch of Woodruff Lane that runs east from Highway 70 toward the Sierra foothills. That two-mile stretch of Woodruff Lane is as straight and flat as an airplane runway. I picture my cell phone diving off the back of the truck, hitting the pavement, bouncing, hopping, and cartwheeling along the road behind my speeding pickup, until it veers off into the ditch bordering Woodruff Lane.

In the driver’s seat, I was oblivious to the plight of my poor cell phone until Woodruff Lane hung a sharp right. At that point, I slowed down and sensed there was a change in the sound and air current from the back of the truck. In my rear-view mirror, I saw the tailgate down and the camper shell door up. I pulled over and bore witness to the horrific situation: my briefcase open, having regurgitated my cell phone; the tailgate and camper shell open, having been unsecured in their closed positions, sabotaged by an errant bungee cord, caught up in the fastening mechanism.

Cell phone gone! “Gaaaa,” I yelled into the quiet vastness of the Northern Sacramento Valley. A hot bubble of anxiety swelled in my chest as I thought of all the ways I would be in trouble without my cell phone. I’m dead without that phone. Too many plans are in flux at the conference in Reno. I’m sure the texts and voicemails are piling up. “Where is he?!!” people are surely saying.   

Only one thing to do: Drive back down that two-mile stretch of Woodruff Lane, back to Highway 70, and hope the cell phone shows itself either lying on the pavement or along the ditches. Would it survive its tragic fall? Flattened by another vehicle on the road? Slowly I drive, retracing my route, scanning all surfaces.

Alas, no phone. I parked the truck and decided to walk. You can’t see down into the ditches while driving. I’ll walk the distance of two roadside telephone poles, peering into the ditch on one side of the road, then cross the road, and repeat on the other side. The ditches are variously watery, steep-banked, thickly brambled, wide, narrow, barbed-wired. I’m biting my lips and flexing my knuckles. C’mon phone! I need you! I’m stranded without you. I can’t even call anyone from a landline, should I find one, because I don’t remember phone numbers anymore.

A guy walks down his driveway. His house is the only one on that stretch of Woodruff Lane. 

“You okay?” he asked. He’s wiping his hands on a mechanic’s rag. “Can I help you?” 

I explain my dilemma. “I have a bike you can use,” he says. I laugh. Silly. A bike. Wait. A bike! 

I got on his bike and rode the roadsides, covering a lot more ground now, still with a good view of the ditches. I found a glove, some shoes, hats, beer cans, whiskey bottles, and sadly, a dead dog facing downhill on a steep embankment. He looked like my dog, Bear, thick and brown. 

An hour later, anxiety level rising, I returned the man’s bike. “I rode the whole length, no phone,” I said. 

“Too bad,” he said. “I don’t bother with those cell phones myself. People are addicted to those things.”

I white-knuckle the two-hour drive to Reno and find a cell phone store. The store guy locates my cell phone through the magic of his computer. There’s my phone, a blip on the screen. “Looks like it’s on a road called………. Woodruff Lane,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, “in a ditch, and I’ll never find it. That ditch is two hours away and I’m out of time. I won’t be back that way for three days.”

I bless the store guy for selling me a new phone. I’m stranded no more.

Funny, no calls or texts were piled up, nobody wondering where I was. No panic but my own.

At the conference center, I tell a friend my horrible experience of cell phone separation anxiety. She nods, apparently not feeling the pain of my story.

I stare at my new phone. People get addicted to these things.