One evening while cleaning up after dinner, my phone rang. The cordless phone handset was sitting in the base near the front door. I picked up the phone, started talking to the friend that had called, and noticed that there was a bag of garbage near the door that I had neglected to take out to the chute.
As I was talking, I reached down and picked up the bag of garbage in one hand. I snuggled the phone between my ear and my shoulder so that I would have my other hand free to open the door, which I did. I then walked the fifteen feet to the garbage chute on my floor, opened it, put the bag of garbage down it, and then watched in horror as my phone leaped from my ear/shoulder, and followed the bag of garbage down the chute.
“Shoot!”” I exclaimed.
Thinking that my friend would still be able to hear me, I yelled, “I’ll call you back!” down the chute. I then hurried back to my apartment, pressed the speakerphone button on the cordless phone base and said, “Hello?” wondering if my friend was still on the line.
“What happened?” was their reply. “It sounded like you fell down a few flights of stairs.”
Well, it was now time to replace a perfectly good cordless phone. I suspect that the handset was tired of being cooped up in my apartment all day long, and made a break for freedom. Too bad it’s freedom would be spent surrounded by bags of old cans of tuna, orange peels, coffee grinds and paper towels with god-knows-what on them.
Even if the handset did work after the fall, I didn’t want it anywhere near my ear or lips.
