Found: phone

Walking to work yesterday I found a mobile phone, lying in the snow. I stood around holding it for several second, trying to decide if the owner was going to come back to the spot where it had been dropped, and I should therefore leave it in an obvious spot, or whether I should take it with me and try to contact the owner. I decided it more likely the phone would be stolen than found by its owner if I left it, so I took it with me to work, holding it out in the open in case the owner was taking the same route I was. When I got close enough to the office to decide that the owner wasn't going to see me, I opened the phone, which had a cute picture of mother and child, and went through the phone book until I found an entry marked 'home', and left a message on the machine.

I then called Verizon, the phone's company, and tried to get them to contact the owner, but I was disconnected from them, and it seemed they had already gotten the idea, and frankly I didn't want to waste any more time on their phone system.A little while later the phone rang, and I, thinking the owner was calling her phone, answered it. The person on the other end was confused at first, but then told me she was meeting the owner for lunch, so could tell her I had her phone. A little while later the phone rang again - this time it was the owner's sister, who pouted (I kid you not) that she guessed she wasn't going to be able to talk to her sister. It was at that point I resolved to stop answering the phone. Around 12:30 the owner called my work phone to say she had gotten the message, and would be by by 3:30. Great! So when 4:00 rolled around, I started to get concerned. By 5:00, I was really in a bind, trying to decide whether to take it with me and try to set up another meeting, or what. Around 5:15 there was a knock on the office door (it had been locked) and the woman whose picture was on the phone was standing outside. She thanked me profusely, commented that it was good I hadn't answered the phone when her mom had called, as I would have never got off the phone, and headed out. Good deed done.

You know, when you were telling this story at the bar, the amount of absolute energy to perform a good deed did not come through as much as it does in reading it. I think this is why so many people would opt to not do a good deed--it can be outright exhausting.

Yeah - the old adage 'no good deed goes unpunished' seemed to apply here quite well. But even with all that, it was worth it to know that I had done something nice for someone. I'll probably do it again if the opportunity arises, even knowing what's in store for me. Now, had I been arrested for theft, perhaps I would have a different take on the matter.