Yes, Toad had a good time driving the BMW!

But that’s not what happened last weekend.

I called my phone over and over again. We were now frustrated having stuck our hands completely under the undercarriage of the driver’s seat. Now you see the BMW front seats with an engine to move the seat forward and backward. I personally think a manual push and pull suits me just fine. With all these mechanics, I began to worry that the phone was crunched between some gear. And as we moved the seat, we waited to smell some smoke, some mind-blowing crunch. But nothing. Somehow we were able to play a scavenger hunt (winning the team name contest of “No sheet Sherlock”) and having the famous wet-style chicken wings at San Tung even with the missing cell phone at the back of our mind. Not to mention that I was sleep deprived.

Chris finally deduced after much searching (and listening carefully)…and finding this weird bump in the ground…that the phone must be stuck in some weird hole. Because of my lack of understanding physics (the only physics class I ever took was in the 8th grade), I did not understand how momentum would carry a phone forward when the car was in motion. Huh? Or how driving up a hill wouldn’t work. How about a steep hill? Nope, not unless the car did some crazy swerving.

Chris got the brilliant idea of using a mirror and I lent him mine. After some 15 minutes of searching, he found my phone. Well as in, he figured out where it was with a mirror. Then thus began the attempts of grabbing it with chopsticks, tongs, tweezers, wire clothes hanger…to all failure. Turned out the momentum had lodged the phone far in this…hole thing…stuck.

Ugh.

On Monday morning, Chris brought his car to the dealership. It turned out my phone was stuck in the air vent. And moreover, when Chris described the ordeal, the mechanics immediately knew the issue. “It’s stuck in the floor air vent right?”

Well then!

The mechanics…yes plural as in not one, not two, but three people attempted to get my phone out. First they put the car on a steep incline. Then they tried to close all vents to blow it out at full force of the AC. Then they used a slim jim which successfully pulled out my phone albeit scratching my screen. And they didn’t even charge Chris a single penny. Reminder to self: go to the dealership for such things and insist that it’s a design flaw.

The phone despite being a Blackberry pearl was a hand-me-down and just $20 to unlock. So I didn’t care. I should be like the guy who posted a thread titled you’ll laugh. iphone stuck under seat vent. I did think it was amusing through this ordeal, because a car could eat my phone!

One thing I realized is that I don’t really even need a cell phone (except for those cases where I need to make an immediate meeting) as most of my communication takes place through digital means. Is this why I am resisting getting a smart phone?

By the way, the mirror that Chris used to spot my phone initially? It’s gone. Because the car ate it.

It was Friday night. We somehow found ourselves at a friend’s game night longer than expected and I was so glad to be back. I wanted to collapse and sleep for hours. But I needed to find my phone. I stumbled out to the car, blindly putting my hand in the front seat and the back seat. Using Chris’ phone, I heard my ringtone—the default ringtone on the blackberry. Ok, good it’s here. Not stuck in Santa Clara nor stuck in Stanford, the two places I had stopped by that Friday evening.

Not being able to find it, I stumbled back and collapsed into a log-like sleep. The following morning, I searched my phone again, calling it with the various devices I had on hand. Still nowhere. Chris later attempted an in-depth search. We called it, determining that it was in the right side of the car. It was near the driver’s seat. We shoved our hands every which way, put our heads upside down. Everything, but it was nowhere. Even in the dark, nothing lit up, nothing vibrated. But every time we called, we could hear that distinct ringtone…ringing somewhere in the deep belly of the car.

It was like the car ate my phone.