Disaster Averted

There are for sure times where things could go completely sideways.. and this was one of them!

Thankfully this isn't anything life threatening, so don't worry!

I was enjoying a normal day of fishing with my son. We were hopping around spots, not really having any luck but we went back to old reliable and certainly had a decent time, where we caught a few fish and lost a good one. We were packing up for the day to go and do a few other errands, as we normally do and I made a mistake!

I was giving my son a quick bug check, because ticks are one of the most evil fucking pieces of shit on the planet, no joke. Lyme disease and the other shit those fuckers transmit are an absolute abomination, with evidence that it was human-enhanced genetic engineering. I could go off on quite a tangent on that one, but checking to make sure my son doesn't have any of those mother fuckers is important on my daily routine.

I had him go to the side of the car so I could check him, and I put my phone on the trunk of the car. We did the bug check, all was good thankfully and hopped in the car to drive off. I pulled away, thinking nothing of it, and we drove a few dozen miles to the next destination. I went to grab my phone before we went in the store.. only it wasn't there. I was confused, because I could have sworn it was on the seat...

Tore the car apart looking for it to no avail. Fuck, are you shitting me?! Having owned a phone for 20 years now, and never once forgot it somewhere, and now I start? LOL mother fucker!

I was frantic searching for the thing, breaking a little bit of a sweat. The phone wasn't what I was concerned about, it's just a piece of tech. It's the data ON the phone that's where the importance is! Specifically authenticator.. what the fuck batman?! Did I save my authenticator info? Do I have a backup anywhere? How am I going to sign into my banking if I can't get a 2FA?

These are all of the things that went through my head, and holy shit it was pretty stressful! We went back and searched the fishing spot all around but sadly no luck.. I was hoping someone would have found it on the ground where we were and put it up in a spot knowing someone would come back and look around. No luck there..

I went to the police station in town and dropped my info off in case someone turned it up, which is one of the things I think I would do. I would probably wait at the fishing spot for a few hours, at least until it got dark waiting for the dude before heading to the police station and dropping it off there.

I got SUUUUUUPER lucky, holy shit. I had my work phone with me, which is a separate one and it's got it's own line. I was hesitant to admit defeat.. but I had to send the text of shame to my wife LOL. She immediately wrote back "I know" and I was like wtf, how the hell do you know?! Apparently the phone stayed on the car for a lot longer than I thought.. all the way past the traffic light and onto the main road! It slid off at some point. What really pisses me off though.. is that when I was getting ONTO the main road is there was a bunch of cars around. Do you think one of them would have seen it and beeped at me like crazy? I know I would have! I can't get too mad though.. because someone came by shortly after apparently, saw the phone and stopped to pick it up before it got crushed and somehow managed to respond to a text my wife sent without unlocking the phone. That is what baffled me, but holy shit am I thankful lol. I tried to give the dude money but he was a good dude and said no way.

I have since taken care of the gaps in my security, ones I won't go into here.. but fuck was that dumb!

One of the things that this really reiterated to me was how important but fragile these things are, especially if we don't have a backup somewhere, or at least somewhere we know it is!

So many things went through my head when it happened, and thankfully none of them were anything like "oh I don't want to lose my contacts" or anything silly like that. Those things can be pieced back together.. but with enhanced security and 2FA things all over the place these days.. THAT is where the real headache lies! I might have been fucked two ways from Sunday if I couldn't get to my 2FA app.. now I need to figure out better ways to manage that thing lol.

What about you, have you accidentally dropped or lost something as critical to your life as your phone? What happened? Let me know in the comments!