It’s My Phone

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Hawk and I went to Anchor & Hope for dinner. It was a wonderful evening: we crossed off #48 on 7×7′s 2010 Big Eat SF list, plus I told a story that made Hawk laugh.

He mentioned that I might want to lead with the story next time. So here I am, not leading with the story.

After work and before I was due at Anchor & Hope, I headed to Westfield because, despite it being a large collection of stores I avoid, it has one thing I love: Maido, a lovely stationery shop filled with fountain pens and notebooks and tiny stickers shaped like frogs and kittens and wheelbarrows and what appear to be smiley-faced boogers.

I kicked around Maido for a while, checking out the happy booger stickers, and then did something I rarely do: I skipped the escalators in favor of the elevator. Now, I am no elevator-hater; I merely prefer the grace and poise of open-air perambulation. But I was weary, and the route to the escalators brought me past the salespeople who yell at me that I need “skincare solutions”, so I elevated instead.

As the elevator opened and I walked toward it, I heard a high-pitched alarm sound behind me. Suddenly, a young man carrying a large Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bag ran at full-speed into the elevator as the high-pitched alarm sound grew louder. Confusing even myself, I ambled right in too.

As the doors closed, and with only the two of us in a small, gently-moving room, it became obvious that the high-pitched alarm sound was emanating from the man’s bag.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said affably.

The man looked at me, slightly out of breath, and said, “It’s my phone.”

I watched with vague interest as he took his clearly-silent phone out of his jeans pocket, flipped it open, and pantomimed pressing a button over and over again.

“Can’t shut it off,” he added.

A second later, the elevator bell dinged, the door opened, and the man darted out. I wandered off to look for a security guard, pondering two things:

1. The man thought I was naïve enough to mistake a security tag alarm for a ringtone.
2. I saw no need to correct him.

About Halsted M. Bernard

Halsted, a/k/a cygnoir, does stuff with words. Her favourite things to do with words are keeping this diary, writing stories, and organising information. She lives in Edinburgh with her husband, two cats, a few gadgets, several fountain pens, and many books.

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