Monday, December 01, 2008

Tonight EKF and I found a phone on the sidewalk. I called the most recent number on the phone to arrange a way to get it back to the person. No one on the other end spoke very good English. I couldn't speak the language they were speaking. It was both our faults. I was passed around to about 5 different people, each of whom tried to understand why I was calling them. "I want to give a lost phone back" I said. "I found it on the sidewalk." They thought I was a bad person I think. I think they thought I stole the phone and was trying to get something out of them. I told them to meet me on the corner of 20th and Belmont. I was a little afraid something bad might go down. But they never showed up. So I left the phone on the little brown sign that says Colonel Summers Park. I called them to tell them as much but it sounded like there was a party on the other end. I felt exploited for some reason, but I'm not sure how. I felt misunderstood. I wanted this person to care very much about their phone, maybe try to pay me a reward for my time and effort, or maybe even try to shoot me in the leg over it. Anyway, there is a phone on that sign if you want to make long distance phone calls with it.

5 comments:

Adam R said...

I found a phone on the sidewalk the other day and, based on the names listed, was afraid to call any of the contacts so I left it there. The names were like, "Thug" and "Crusher" and then some dirty ones too.

J said...

I found a phone once.. after trying to call some of their contacts I called the wireless provider who contacted the owner for me. They contacted me later that night, we set up an meeting to return the phone. When they picked it up they offered me a reward, which I refused. A few days later I recieved a gift card from blockbuster, I think.

Amish Trivedi said...

Geez, Zach, did you even bother trying to find out what language they spoke so that you could try and find someone else who spoke it as well as English so you could try and contact the people again?

Free long distance, you say?

Zachary Schomburg said...

Amish,

Yeah, in fact, I took a semester's worth of classes in their language in order to get "the basics" down. Then I traveled to their county for a while and immersed myself in their culture and became quite fluent. When I returned, I was excited by the notion of a smooth phone return transaction, but their phone account had been cancelled and I was behind on my bills. My relationships were all in the toilet. My dog killed itself in the oven. I found some gangrene between my toes.

Amish Trivedi said...

Hmmm....well, you did all you could then.

Unless you also lost the toes.

That would be something

:)