Your Cell Phone Is Your Lifeline

Can you even imagine life without your cell phone? Losing it would be devastating!

When my daughter was a freshman, she unknowingly dropped her cell phone on the Boston "T" (subway). Imagine our confusion when we received a call from a complete stranger telling us he had our daughter's cell phone. More importantly, we immediately wondered where our daughter was. Fortunately, the caller was quite honorable and gave us information as to how my daughter could retrieve it: at his place of employment, in a very public location.

Now the tricky part. How do we reach my daughter to pass along the contact information? We had no obvious way to call her. We emailed her, hoping she might be near a computer, and soon after she called us back. She and a friend were able to retrieve the phone together. If you ever have a similar experience, be certain to call your cell phone provider immediately and request a hold on your phone, eliminating the risk of an enormous phone bill. And, in the interest of your safety, be certain to pick up your phone in a very public location, accompanied by a friend.

From then on, we realized we needed a better plan. We had both our kids provide us with the cell phone numbers for a few of their closest friends. While my daughter's cell phone's address book listed our phone numbers as "Mom" and "Dad", which made it obvious for the good Samaritan to call us to report the phone loss, there's also another commonly accepted practice for designating who should be contacted. When you set up your address book, include the acronym ICE, "in case of emergency", before the names of the people you designate to be called. So, for instance, "ICE Mom", "ICE Dad", "ICE daughter Sarah". This clearly specifies your preferred contacts. We also provided our kids with the phone numbers for some extended family members and friends.

And, by the way, have you called your mother lately?!