Where Are You?

Friday night at 8:38 pm. I know the precise time because my cell phone keeps track of such stuff. That's when it rang or whatever you call it now when the cell phone has an incoming call. Ring seems a little wrong because mine does not ring. I nearly ignored the call because it did not report the caller name. But finally I answered.

It was a lady from the alarm company monitoring service. The alarm at our office - which is a Mobile Mini, kind of an un-glorified trailer - had been triggered and she had called the police and I was the 2nd name on her list. The first name on her list was about 3 hours away and I knew it.

Wasn't much to do except drive over there and find out what was going on. I figured it was the cleaning crew and there wasn't any good way to get in touch with anyone. That's a deficiency we need to correct.

Took me 17 minutes to drive the 8 miles. Usually takes less than that but Friday night traffic was really busy. The cleaning crew is a woman and her husband. They are very nice and were so apologetic. In fact it made me feel badly for them and it was made worse when I noticed their two little kids in the back seat of their car.

I asked if the police had arrived and they hadn't although they had driven past.

Later on the way back home I received a call from someone with the police department. He said they couldn't find us.

That's funny because we are the only house in 1/2 mile north and south and east and west on our side of the roads anyway.

He had me verify the address and when I did he said that address didn't seem to exist on his map. (It exists on Google street view but I did not mention that.) I told him we'd been there since 1951. He said the number didn't seem to be right. I said "well, we didn't have anything to do with the number. Someone else gave that to us when the city annexed us." He suggested I tell the security system people to give the police better directions when they called in the future. I said I would although I had a few other choice comments in mind.

FedEx always used to have trouble finding me, too. But they seem to have worked it out now.

The same week one of my grandchildren missed the bus and was unable to report it because of the cell phone battery being discharged. My wife and I were discussing this.

I said that I had missed the bus once when I was a child and I don't remember how I made it home but I did. It wouldn't have done me much good to have had a cell phone since we didn't have a phone at home then. And if that problem had been solved then we didn't have a second car to use. Mom might have been able to get the truck out to come after me but not with any certainty.

That kind of went with my first story so I just lumped them together.