Violation

The other night sometime between 7:40 and 8:10, I "lost" my phone. By 8:11 whoever "found" it was making phone calls to Garden City, New Jersey. It wasn’t until a little after 10PM that I discovered the missing phone when I went to recharge it for the night. By 11PM I had contacted Verizon to shut the phone down. The creep used 43 minutes.

It wasn’t until last night that I began to feel slightly violated. Someone had my phone and wasn’t honest enough to turn it in to lost and found at the Track. Someone had all my phone numbers of family, friends, business contacts and tenants. Someone had access to photos of Phoenix and Diablo, sunsets in Hawaii and crazy people swimming in Lake George on New Year’s Day. Someone knows when my next doctor’s appointment is. Someone knows what time I get up in the morning.

Fortunately I had my old phone in the basement. The phone is so old that the last time I took it into Verizon for service (microphone went out), the technician wrinkled his nose at it while he dangled it by the attached strap as if it were a dead rat.

With four months to go before my two year contract expires, I hardly want to get a new phone. Prior to the loss, I had only used 40 of my 450 minutes (Yeah, Jose was kind to me; the idiot didn’t call any international numbers.) Based on that usage – or lack there of – I don’t even need a phone, but I run around in a 1989 Jeep Cherokee with 330,000 miles. I like having a phone. Now I have a seven year old phone providing a bit of assurance on my nineteen year old Jeep.