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OK, so I peed in the bushes. I entered those bushes with a single-minded purpose. Yet I emerged into a world of mystery, a potential material witness for a possible felony. I found myself protecting the reputation of a man I’d never met, dancing around the prying questions of his wife whom I also never met. All of that could have been prevented had there simply been a public restroom.
It was a rare Sunday afternoon of beer for me, and I knew I was in trouble as we approached New York City’s exit door at the Holland Tunnel. My friend at the wheel assured me we’d make it. The determined look on his face and his sternly locked jaw assured me I was not alone in this ordeal. As we descended into the dark tunnel, my doubts grew with my bladder, but when I saw light streaming at the other end, hope returned. I don’t ever remember being so happy to see New Jersey.
The plan was simple: once we exited the tunnel, we would make a bee-line to the first of many gas stations lining the toll plaza exit corridor and madly scramble over each other to be the first guy to the bathroom. After being advised by two attendants in different buildings that there were no bathrooms, my last shred of decorum yielded to physiologic distress. I am not much into plants, and I rarely give a second glance to the varied flora around me. At that moment my eyes were sharp for it, looking for that perfect little forest in the concrete world of the Port Authority.
There in the bushes, I was presented with yet another useless smartphone.
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So singularly focused was I on this relief mission that I still do not know where my travelling partner went. He just fell off my radar and obviously forged ahead with his own solution. My eyes danced around the paved landscape and suddenly—there it was—a beautiful thicket of small trees against the forgotten side of a brick kiosk. As I stumbled headlong into the foliage, I noticed a flat little black case perched in the branches like an offering. I blissfully voided, grabbed the small prize, and left the grove. My friend was gunning the engine.
“Let’s get out of here!” he shouted. So I hopped in and opened the leather fold of this new-found treasure as my friend squealed rubber, distancing us quickly from the scene of our crime.
And behold—there in my hands was an iPhone. The timing couldn’t be better. My own Android smartphone suffered screen failure mere days before, mocking me by displaying only a single white pixel and giggling with haptic feedback as my finger blindly tickled its black glass surface. It conceded nothing in the way of functional information. There in the bushes, I was presented with yet another useless smartphone.
It soon became apparent from the wallpaper and limited messages that this phone belonged to a young woman.
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The iPhone still had a charge, and my fingers greedily dancing over the icons, hungry for smartphone interactivity as I unleashed the hounds of my inner geek on this device. It had no password protection and therefore was an open book. I finally managed to channel the energy of my ecstatic post-urinary delirium into a more focused strategy; I explored it further with the single aim of gathering just enough information to return it to its owner.
The amateur detective in me noticed a few things right away. The phone was on and still had about 20 percent charge. With a battery standby time of 2-300 hours, I figured it could conceivably have been there for over a week. But the phone was bone-dry and functional, so it was likely lost after the hard rain of a few days ago. I did not delve into the messaging or emails out of respect, which may have given me further glimpses into its final moments before it was orphaned.
It soon became apparent from the wallpaper and limited messages that this phone belonged to a young woman. That this was found in the bushes gave me pause. Was there a darker story here? Could this device, now thoroughly bathed in my fingerprints, be a vital piece of evidence in a criminal investigation? I shuddered as I imagined security tapes playing on the six o’clock news, showing me smiling as I departed a thoroughly soaked crime scene. “If you have seen this man caught in the act of public urination, please call the police immediately. . . . ” It was possible that I entered the bushes to pee, and emerged on the most wanted list.
I realized I quite possibly knew something about her husband she didn’t. At the very least, he was a public urinator.
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So the motivation to find the owner and resolve the issue took on more urgency. I deciphered the phone’s number and called AT&T—the service provider—to alert them. A representative suggested I drop the phone off at any AT&T center. Yet when I visited the only nearby kiosk, I was told in so many words they were ill-equipped to reunite lost phones with owners. I would have to assume that responsibility myself.
I went through the phone’s contact list and, using my own backup phone, finally talked to a woman named Anna. I asked her if she was indeed Anna M., and she guardedly acknowledged she was.
“Well, I am calling you about a phone I found in . . . well . . . New Jersey.” When I told her the number of the phone, she suddenly sounded relaxed and cheerful, acknowledging that it was indeed her daughter’s phone.
“She lost seven or eight phones recently. But you’re the only one who bothered to call us.”
I wondered if this nightmare could be playing out in other bushes. She went on to say that her husband borrowed the phone. Then, she asked where I found it. I was instantly on the spot, looking for a graceful answer. There was none. Unless he was a highly dedicated botanist, there could be only one barely legal reason his phone would end up in that thicket of trees by the tunnel entrance, and pondering other reasons only got darker. I realized I quite possibly knew something about her husband she didn’t. At the very least, he was a public urinator. Like me. Was he even supposed to be there? I never even met the guy, yet I felt his fate—perhaps his very marriage—was suddenly in my hands. I started talking around the answer as best I could, wending my way with incomplete sentences to the anticipation of a joyful smartphone reunion and stumbled to a stop. Thankfully, she did not press me further.
She asked me to let her know the cost of shipping the phone back to her would be and offered to write me a check. I suggested instead that she just “pay forward” the same spirit of favor to someone else in similar straits. I didn’t need to be compensated for postage though I could certainly use the karma—perhaps netting me another smartphone which not only works, but that I could actually keep. But I would settle for a karma that will simply ensure a summertime full of convenient bushes when I need them. Simple, uncomplicated bushes without smartphones in them, please.
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Photo credit: Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash
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