Phone Karma

I got onto the Blue Line at Jackson and sat down next to an iPhone.

My first reaction: An empathetic sinking feeling for the poor soul who surely realized their mistake the instant the train pulled away. My second reaction: Bomb.

A brilliant plan to leave a shiny iPhone on a train bound for O’Hare, to be scooped up by some greedy soul and walked right onto a airplane. I picked it up.

It wasn’t very shiny. Rather smudged, actually. It looked used. A bomb in an iPhone would surely be in a new iPhone, I decided. No one’s likely to make a bomb out of their personal phone.

And so, I held a 16-gig iPhone in my hand. Sigh, covet. What to do? I was already pushing it on time, I hadn’t yet acquired a boarding pass, and now I’m going to hunt down Metro lost and found at O’Hare? I sat there with the iPhone for a moment.

Not mine.

I looked up and boldly queried my neighbors in our back corner of the train. “Does anyone know if there’s a lost and found at O’Hare? I sat down next to this.”

I waved the iPhone high. My fellow passengers looked at it as though I’d just hoisted a gold bar above my head. iPhone. Lost iPhone and I’m basically offering it to strangers.

A friendly fellow confirmed that there was likely a lost & found at O’Hare, but just as I’m telling myself I’m going to have to take time on the airport end to deal with this, an athletic girl with cool short hair and a bike and clearly returning from a race - she’s numbered 312 and when I first sat down I heard her tell someone she’d crashed and not finished - offers to take the phone and find a number in the directory to call when she gets home to return it. Her being a local, she’ll take the time to deal with it.

I quickly decide that if you’re going to offer a lost iPhone up to the general populace, you’re just going to have to trust the soul who stands up to take care of it. I give her the phone and thank her.

The train moves on and soon we’re exchanging stories of lost phones and the like. I tell the story of the BlogHer who left a bag of books in a cab last year only to have the cabby find her on his day off because she’d been talking about the conference to her friends in the cab. Bike chick tells how a friend of hers had lost a phone and she’d been the last number called, so the person who found the phone called her and the phone was reunited with its owner.

“Now you can pay it forward,” I say. I’m feeling good about her. She’s quite sporty as she stands there next to her racing bike.

I remember and tell the friendly guy how my phone had fallen out of my purse in a restaurant the night before. It had taken me a beat to realize and so it sat on the floor behind my booth for 2 or 3 minutes - unsnatched, unkicked. The couple at the table next to me gave me a look when I popped around to get it, though. Like they’d been considering what to do about it. Before I slipped back into my booth, we exchanged knowing looks about Wow, That woulda sucked for me/you.

I decide that I’m paying it forward, too. Thanking the universe for my safe retrieval of my phone. Phone karma.

The other Metro passengers do not join our conversation. The matter has been resolved, and no matter what their assessment of the likelihood that the phone will be returned to its owner, they let it lie. It has been pocketed. It is on a new path.

But at a later stop, someone pokes their head into the train and says something. It must have been very brief and not very loud, because I don’t even hear it. I’m not listening, bike chick isn’t listening, friendly guy isn’t listening.

All I know is, the scruffy guy in the corner with a view of the door suddenly says loudly, “The phone! You have the phone!”

We wake up and look at him. What?

It was the train operator looking for the phone, but now he is gone and the doors are closed. “Hit the button,” the scruffy guys says, pointing to a large red button on the wall by me.

Bike chick and I attempt this and get no response, but I speak into the microphone. “We have the phone,” I try.

Scruffy guy stands up and takes command. He shows us that the line is open to the cab - The operator must not be back there yet. He tries again - We have the phone - and this time the operator’s voice replies, “What car are you in?”

We have no idea.

The scruffy guy says, “The last car.”

I didn’t think it was the last car, but now we wait. I look out the window so I can wave at the operator if he walks by.

I think about making my flight. It takes a while and we passengers sit barely patient. But, the phone must go home. I am so relieved for the owner who surely must have thought it was a lost cause but tried anyway because how can you not? Heck, I lost a jacket on Thursday night and that baby’s gone.

The train operator arrives - I note that he is in uniform, as though I think there might be some massive iPhone napping plot unfolding. Bike chick gives him the phone, he says thank you, and I think about the owner getting the phone back and how happy they will be. I look at the time - on my Not-An-iPhone - and decide I will probably make my flight just fine.

I didn’t hear the conductor poke his head in. If I hadn’t spoken up and involved my spontaneous community of fellow passengers, I might have missed my flight while I wandered around looking for some Metro lost and found. Or at least, not gotten MBF the Garrett Popcorn I’d planned to buy him in the airport. Or had a chance to shovel down the leftovers I’d schlepped from Volare to Threadless and all the way to the airport. Red line, blue line, walk, walk, walk. With luggage. And pasta.

I am sure that someone could easily pocket an iPhone. I don’t know anything about what one would have to do to use it without being caught, but I’m sure plenty of people do. But for many of us, we have a collective understanding of how losing your tech feels. Of the cost of it. Of the shiny. I am personally so thankful that that phone will make its way back into its owner’s hands.

Chatting with the friendly guy we talk about how I’m in town for a blogging conference, and we exchange cards. “You’ll have to blog this,” he says. “The story of the phone.”

I think about Neil Kramer and Amy Turn Sharp’s BlogHer 2009 session, Blogging as Storytelling, and I smile.

Comments

[Denise]

Yay for storytelling and for rescuing lost iPhones.

[Belinda Gomez]

Too bad there's no real story.

[lizriz]

Definitely.  Very inspired for the coming year for sure.  

[lizriz]

Curious, what does "real" story mean to you?