Losing It

I’ve lost my phone seven times. Taxi, ex’s apartment, a party, a café in New York, my aunt’s house, the bus—and once it fell off a church tower while a few friends and I were being idiots trying to film something. I probably got it back three times, if I’m being generous. The rest meant a trip to the phone store and the depressing knowledge that I’d just spent money that could’ve gone toward ice cream on replacing the same device I apparently can’t hold onto.

The typical solution is to just not lose it, which is clearly advice I don’t respond to. But there’s this case from Berlin, Phonie, that approaches it differently: put a chain on the thing. Which sounds absolutely stupid at first—the kind of attachment that gets you laughed at in middle school, turns you into the kid with the weird phone lanyard. But somehow they made it not look terrible. The chains are decent, the transparent case lets your phone show through, and you can wear it around your neck or sling it crossbody if you want. It looks like something someone might actually choose to wear, not something you’d be forced into by sheer practicality.

What gets me is how the whole concept is both completely ridiculous and immediately obvious. Yeah, attach it to your body. Don’t let it leave. It’s simple enough that you wonder why everyone doesn’t do this, and embarrassing enough that almost nobody does. It’s the kind of thing that makes you feel foolish for not thinking of it, and even more foolish for considering using it. What are you, twelve years old?

But I still think about that church tower, the café in New York where my phone disappeared into the void, the money I’ll never get back—money that could’ve been ice cream. And I wonder if next time I lose my phone, which I will, I’ll finally just buy the chain and be done with it.