“May I help you?” He asked with a smile.

I poured out my tale of woe to him with one dramatic statement.

“I lost my phone.” I shrieked as my face undoubtedly registered the proper amount of angst for the moment.

“Oh! That’s not good.” He grimaced. “What’s your phone number?” He reached for the device hanging on his hip with all the panache of a Wild West gunslinger.

After typing in my phone number he ushered me to some padded benches where other customers were waiting and kindly told me I had about a twenty minute wait.

After a couple of minutes I got bored and reached in my shirt pocket for my phone.

My heart sank even further.

I didn’t really know what they could do. On the drive over there I had imagined they might have an inner sanctum where they could sit in front of a giant screen and type in some numbers to find your phone.

Sitting there fidgeting and twiddling in the quiet of the store I was a miserable wreck. If I hadn’t quit smoking some twenty years ago I would have gone outside and paced back and forth while smoking a whole pack.

When the excruciating wait was over, I eventually found myself standing in front of a counter with a store employee on the other side reassuring me that he could help me in locating my iPhone. And as it turned out, it was about in the same method as I had imagine, only not as elaborate.

After plugging my phone number into an iPad, we both watched as blotches of a map started to randomly appear across the screen. In less than ten seconds the map covered the entire screen with a small icon representing my iPhone pulsating out at us.

“Where is that?” I asked as I stared at the throbbing image.

“Outside in the parking lot.” The man answered with a smile. “Your iPhone is in your car.”

Something in my head told me that this scenario had played out many times during the course of this man’s employment at the iPhone store and that each time, he had relished the chance to play God.

“Thank you so much.” I said as I ran out of the store, across the parking lot and into my car. Grabbing a flashlight out of the glove compartment, I began a frenzied sweep of every corner of the vehicle’s interior. After going over every conceivable nook and cranny several times over, there it was. Wedged between the driver’s seat and the console, almost invisible against the dark carpeting of the car, was my iPhone.

I reached under the seat, my fingers straining to grab it and finally pulling it out into the daylight.

Relief poured down on me. I stared at its black, shiny screen. My breathing started to return to normal and a calmness that had been absent from me for the last couple of hours permeated my being.

Everything was going to be OK. Life could go on. All was right again with the world.

And that girl? The one in the sporting goods store?

That seems like a million years ago.

Who would have ever thought that it would come to this?