A MYSTERY ARISES - HAD I CHECKED THE SOFA OVER THE YEARS ...

Another week gone by already?

Whenever we have a problem finding something I tell my husband when I clean up, I will find it.  No matter how good a schedule I set up, sooner or later I am going to fall behind for one reason or another.  The secret is to catch up as soon as possible, even if it is in baby steps of a few minutes here and there. 

It really is true that when I clean up I find items we haven’t been able to find, as well as items we didn’t know we were missing.  An organizing book I was recently reading (at Barnes and Nobles - there you have me - one way to keep from having more of a mess is that I read organizing books at B&N and do not buy them and bring them home) talked about finding lots of cash in sofas - hundreds of dollars in some cases.  This greatly confused me as I have never found any cash in any sofa or chair. I could not imagine anyone losing money into a sofa or chair and not realizing it.

No, I did not find cash in the sofa.  Tonight I was talking to my mom on my cell phone.  I try to call her when I can - our lives do not sync she is a morning person and I am a night person - and have found Wednesday evening a good time to call - I don’t like what husband is watching on TV and she is still awake and not watching anything.  (I learned a couple of years never to call when “Downton Abbey” was on any channel in any form or any show about it as she loved the show.) 

I also never keep change in my pockets - it weights them down.  Today I had lunch out alone and had the coins I received in change in my pocket and had not yet tossed it into the change keeper upstairs (periodically we bring the change to the credit union and change it into “real” money).  As our 2 hour conversation was winding down (mom talks like I do and I talk like I write) I felt the coins slipping out of my pocket - see, who could lose coins without knowing about it.

I slid my hand in between the cushions to get my change back and I felt something much larger and hard.  I pulled out a phone.  At first I thought it was the cordless phone from the house as it was about that shape and black like the one we have.  I was going to walk it into the kitchen - perhaps mom or one of my sisters called me on our landline and I had sat on the sofa to talk to her and left the phone and it fell into the crack?

I looked at the phone again and it was an older Nokia cell phone.  It did not ring a bell.  I had a Nokia but it was not this big.  I set it aside and pulled the coins out of the sofa - hey, 31 cents is nothing to sneeze at.

When I was done talking to mom I walked into the kitchen and handed the old cell phone to my husband.  He looked at me, I shrugged.  He did not recognize the phone either.  He thought it was my oldest one.  I told him that mine was much smaller - it fit in the front pocket of my jeans as all my cell phones have.  I then had a flip phone of unremembered make, and then a Razr, followed by my beloved Palm Centro and now my Blackberry.  Not my phone.

He kept looking at it and trying to remember.  Perhaps it was his first cell phone from work?  He had the case he made for it in a drawer in our studio (we keep charging cords and other cell phone related items in this drawer) - but the case was much too small for the phone.  His second cell phone from work was turned in when he left and then he also had the Razr followed by the Centro and since then, being a normal person as opposed to me, an Android.

So we have this strange cell phone.  We have no idea where it came from.  Could someone have been visiting back when the phone was new and we still had never thought we would ever have bedbugs and we still had people in the house?  I guess it is possible.  But then wouldn’t the person have called and tried to track down their missing phone when they realized it was missing? 

I just did a quick search of Nokia phones online (amazing how one can waste time when one is curious about something - not exactly a “ripping good” mystery, but it is a mystery).  I now know that it is a Nokia 918 and came out in 1997 - almost 20 years ago.  I hope it has not been in the sofa that long.  

So where did it come from? Here’s a thought - I think 1997 is before we bought the sofa - or just around when we did.  Maybe it has been there all along and was left by someone from the company we bought it from?

Well, of course it could be left later than 1997 as that is when it came out and it could be any time after then.  Perhaps one of the few children we have had in our house sometime after 1997 was playing with mom or dad’s old phone and left it?  We did have meetings for a craft guild we belonged to in the 1990's and some meetings were in the living room - maybe one of them?  I am pretty sure this is a mystery which will not be solved.
   
I guess if I had thought to check between the cushions of the sofa years ago, we would have a better idea.

Have you ever had a mystery item such as this?