All the Crazy Stuff I Used to Do

It used to be that I jumped headfirst into every crazy thing. If someone came in the middle of the night and said we need you to go to the suburbs to rescue so and so, I wouldn’t think twice but would pick up my purse. If someone needed driven to the hospital, I’d ask do I have time to use the bathroom? I can remember being asked to do a lot of crazy things.

That’s why when I checked Facebook Saturday a.m. and saw that my daughter had posted about leaving her phone in an Uber, I knew my morning might not be lazy. She often works nights and takes a ride home instead of her bike.

Mid-morning she stopped in and I immediately asked if she’d gotten it back—no, but I know where it is. The iCloud had tracked her phone to the far northern suburbs. Without batting an eyelash I stood up and said, We’re gonna go get it.

But first I’d have to borrow a car, since I don’t have one. Not an Uber, though. A friend loaned us her van and we took off, tracking the phone to outside of Libertybville, where every village is called Round Lake, Grayslake, etc. We ended up outside of an apartment building.

There it is! We found the car, but when I rang her phone we realized it wasn’t in the car. We’d have to find the driver—amongst one of the units in the building. We started with one where we could hear people moving around inside. A woman answered the door and Grace asked for Ahmed. She got her grandson to interpret for her since she only spoke Spanish. No.

We realized we’d have to knock on many more doors. I was starting to feel foolish for taking off on this hair-brained venture. We didn’t really have a solid plan. Grace knocked on another door and a man in a bathrobe answered. Did I mention that in my advance state of second-guessing I began to think: We could be killed, cut up into tiny pieces, stuffed into a Dumpster. The usual train of thinking I used to have when off on an escapde—something along the lines like this might turn out really bad.

But it was Ahmed and yes he had her phone. He’d contacted Uber to let them know, but because Grace hadn’t ordered the ride (her friend had) she didn’t know who to contact and they didn’t have her info either.

Success! But it yanked me back down memory lane. So that when I told an old friend about our adventure she said, “Do you remember that time we went to check out a serial killer or some cult guy?” I seriously did not remember. Are you making this up? No, she said, I’m pretty sure it was you—and all I could say was, well, it sounds like something I would do.

Now I’ve got to track down that story and write it up later.