"By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" by Joanne Greene is available for pre-order from your online favorite book sellers. Release date June 20,2023
Learn more at joanne-greene.com

In this Story...I Lose My Phone
For the first forty-six years of my life, I functioned, if not thrived, without the use of a cell phone. For the next five years, I carried a cell phone that was simply a phone. It could neither take photos nor provide me with answers to all my questions. Yet now, well into my sixties, I feel stripped of my identity, naked, bereft and totally destabilized when, suddenly, my trusty iPhone goes AWOL.
It happened in LA at a mediocre Mexican restaurant two weeks ago. I took said phone into the baño with me to sneak a text to my son. Two words into the message, seated and in progress, I noticed the empty toilet paper dispenser. Dammit. Necessity led me to try the toilet seat covers - a sorry substitute. Flustered, I did what I could and headed to the sink, carefully placing my phone on the blue tiled ledge while I lathered up. When I returned to our outdoor table and reflexively reached for my phone, it wasn’t there. Oh no. It’s probably still on that ledge. A quick trip back to the baño yielded nothing. The first waiter I stopped knew nada. The next waiter said that a woman in a tight black dress, irrelevant but apparently memorable, had asked if anyone lost a phone.
“Great,” I replied. “Did she turn it in?
“No,” he shook his head without guilt or remorse. “She left.”
First, I panicked. Then, got angry. Ranted about hating the restaurant and its unhelpful wait staff. My husband remained calm and sprang into action. He tried the “find my phone” function. To no avail. He called my number. No answer. He texted “reward for return of this phone!” Crickets.
Then, he drove us straight to Costco to purchase a replacement. He’d cancelled the credit card I’d slipped into the phone’s case on an app he’d downloaded and spoke to our insurance agent who confirmed that we were out of luck. Pathetically, I kept apologizing and thanking him. Using his phone, I ordered a replacement driver’s license from DMV and a new medical card from Kaiser. An hour later, new phone in hand, I felt whole again. There were calls, emails and texts that I’d missed; social media posts and news events had taken place without my knowledge. Yet now, I could resume my unhealthy dependency and, once again, feel connected. I had a phone. A better phone. And all my data was intact. I could breathe again.