Forgot my phone – what in the heck will I do??

My wonderful husband usually drops me off for the local art fairs. He helps me unload the car, and we set up the tent before he bids me farewell, wishes me good luck, and heads back home.

On this particular day, I got everything set up, including the tables, my wall, and all of the prints that I had for sale. The setup usually takes about 1.5 hours. As I was finishing up and putting the pricing labels on various pieces, a patron wandered into my booth a little bit early. 

She had a handful of prints and seemed very interested in buying them. Excited that she wanted to buy, I reached for my phone in my back right pocket so I could charge her for the prints, and I realized that my phone wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere that I looked. Oh no! It was in the car with my husband, probably back at our house by this time.

The phone had been plugged in during our drive so we could get directions to the fair. Normally, I would be playing music, too, but this time we were listening to NPR on the radio. I think that if we had played music, I would have naturally grabbed my phone as soon as we got to the fair.

I wasn’t sure what to do, and I didn’t want to panic. But let me tell you, I felt pretty darned helpless without my phone! I’m so used to having the world at my fingertips! I couldn’t do a thing. I couldn’t contact the event coordinator because her phone number was on my phone. I couldn’t text. I couldn’t call. I couldn’t look anything up. It was an awful feeling.

Luckily, the patron in my booth was very nice, and she let me call and text my husband, but it all went nowhere since it was an unrecognized number to him.

I decided to go to my booth neighbor to see if I could use her phone instead, because this patron was not going to be at the fair all day. As I was about to text my husband again from a new phone, he walked up. 

THANK GOODNESS!

He realized that the phone was still in the car. He stopped at home, did a couple of things, and then returned to the fair on Muni, our local public transit, saving the day!

Have you ever been unexpectedly phoneless? What did you do when it happened?