Last Thursday, I sat in a packed parking lot on a college campus teeming with people in a city of more than 100,000. But I might as well have been alone on a leaky raft in the middle of an ocean because I was stranded.
It happened thanks to a long line of disastrous dominoes, the first of which fell a day earlier when my left eye started to hurt. By the end of the day, when I took out my contact lenses, it felt worse. By the next morning, I was googling symptoms and came up with “corneal abrasion” — also known as an eye scratch. Treatment tips include consulting a doctor, using eye drops, shielding the eye from bright light, and avoiding contact lenses for several days.
But I couldn’t find my glasses that morning, and my daughter, Kate, needed a ride to her college campus to take a test. Tom was away on business, and there wasn’t enough time to call an Uber for the 30-minute drive. So I dug through a closet and found it — a black eye patch my son once wore to a pirate-themed party in kindergarten. It was emblazoned with a skull and crossbones and sized for a preschooler, but I made it work. I popped a contact lens into the good eye, and off we went.
Half an hour later, we made it to a parking lot on campus. She hopped out and said she’d be done in one or two hours. I parked and waited, in case she finished early. But when I reached into my purse for my phone, it wasn’t there. In my haste to find an eye patch, I’d left the phone at home.
No problem, I told myself. I grew up in the 80s, when cell phones weren’t even a thing yet. I could wait without a phone. But at the two-hour mark, Kate hadn’t come back, triggering a rising tide of unease. I couldn’t call to ask why. Was she sick? Hurt? I needed a phone to find out.
So I came up with a plan. Step 1: Ask a stranger. Step 2: Borrow a phone. Step 3: Text Kate to meet me. I headed toward a couple of students nearby, but stopped short when I remembered I was wearing a pirate patch. Asking a stranger to lend you their phone is one thing, but doing it while wearing a skull-and-crossbones eye patch exceeds the acceptable threshold for “weird.” I whipped off the patch and shoved it in my pocket before I approached.
They must have sensed I was just a frazzled mom and not a threat because one of them handed me her phone. But texting with only one good eye is a blurry fiasco. And suddenly I wasn’t even sure of my daughter’s phone number.
I hurriedly typed a text and then sent a second one to my friend, Shannon, whose number hasn’t changed in 16 years and is therefore still solid in my middle-aged brain. Then I handed the phone to the student and got back in my car. Fifteen minutes later, Kate still wasn’t back.
My mind galloped toward worst-case scenarios. I had to try again. But the stream of students walking by between classes had dwindled. So I drove to the closest store and explained my predicament to the clerk at the register. When she let me use her phone, I called my mom, but it went straight to voicemail. Then I remembered: A week earlier, I’d changed mom’s phone settings to send spam and calls from unknown numbers straight to voicemail — including me. So I sent another hurried text to Kate and one more to Shannon. Then I told the clerk I was going to browse for a few minutes, in case my daughter or friend texted back.
Five minutes later, I bought a sweatshirt to reciprocate the clerk’s kindness. As she handed me the receipt, her phone lit up with a number I knew. “That’s the friend I texted!” I said, and she handed it over.
“Is it really you?” I heard Shannon ask as I answered.
“Yes, it’s me! Thank God you called. I left my phone at home, and Kate hasn’t come back to the spot where we were supposed to meet. Can you call her for me?”
“I’m so glad it’s you. I got your earlier text, but there were typos and no capital letters, so I was worried that it was an AI-generated hoax. I didn’t want to call your daughter and tell her to go to a parking lot and then end up on Dateline.”
This is one of the many reasons Shannon and I have been friends for so long. We both have hypervigilant mom brains that try to think 10 steps ahead of potential criminals. She said she’d call Kate with the message, and I raced back to campus to get her. She had tried to text and call me, of course, and when I didn’t answer, she checked my location. The Find My app made her think I’d gone home, when in fact I was right where she left me.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, I was exasperated and exhausted but determined to learn from my mistake. It’s not the 80s anymore, my friends. VHS tapes faded away, and so did payphones. Our smartphones do the remembering now, and it’s scary out there without a digital lifeboat. So pack an extra charger, buy spare glasses, and write down the phone numbers your smartphone is holding hostage. You never know when a one-eyed, no-good, very bad day might leave you stranded, too.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her book is available on Amazon.