As readers of this blog know, I have had my troubles migrating to the iPhone. First there was the matter of my peripheral-eating computer that managed to kill two iPhones that were attached to it, and there was the one that was dead out of the box and never even made it out of the Apple store. But number four (who I dubbed He Who Must Not Be Named) was doing great – good sound, long battery life, great reception – a winner, pure and simple. Then came the day, about three weeks ago, when He Who Must Not Be Named went missing. We searched high and low, called all of the places I had been to that day, tore the cars and the house apart to no avail. My wonderful little iPhone was gone! We isolated its last appearance to a restaurant, and when they didn’t find it, came to a sad conclusion – someone had stolen the iPhone! Argh! I waited a few days, in hopes that some honest soul would turn in the phone, but no such luck. So I called at&t and deactivated the SIM card, which meant that whatever nefarious individual had made off with the iPhone had basically stolen themselves an expensive iPod (unless they were inventive and knew how to [hack the iPhone](http://www.hacktheiphone.com/)). But with a deactivated SIM card they were not, by gum, going to make any overseas calls on *my* dime!

I was at that point faced with a quandary: get a new iPhone, or punish myself and my flakiness by getting another, lesser cell phone. Chuck pshawed my self-punishment plans, and we went to the at&t store and bought another iPhone. This one also works great, and iTunes had no trouble restoring all of my info to the new iPhone.

Life settled back into a normal routine and time passed (three weeks, to be precise) and yesterday I was out doing some Christmas shopping in my Mini Cooper. I had my iPhone (which connects to the car’s bluetooth great, so I can do hands free talking in the car) on the passenger’s seat, and as I took a corner the iPhone went shooting off the seat and fell down into the space between the door and the passenger’s seat. Since it’s bluetooth this wasn’t a big deal, so I continued on to my destination, figuring I’d retrieve the phone when I was parked. Once I was parked, I got out of the car and went to the passenger’s side, opened the door and started looking for the phone. There it was under the seat, wedged next to an edge of carpet. I picked it up, and noticed that it was off – which was weird as the bluetooth signal had been great until I turned the engine off just an instant before. Hmm. I happened to glance into the back, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but – no, not a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer – another iPhone! No way! Yes, way. In my hand I held He Who Must Not Be Named. There on the floor of the car was my newest iPhone. I have no explanation as to how this happened except I did turn 50 in October and apparently am suffering from a case of [CRS](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=CRS). I don’t remember ever being in the Mini on the day I lost the iPhone, so my best guess is that the little devil knows how to break into cars. And wanted a vacation. And didn’t respond when we called the phone while the car doors were open during the original search (it did occur to us that the phone may have fallen in between the seats of *either* car). Of course, by the time we took to calling it, the battery had no doubt run down and the phone had turned itself off, so I lean toward the phone breaking into the car theory.

So here I sit, with two iPhones staring at me. I checked prices on [craigslist](http://craigslist.org/) for used iPhones, and I think I can get $300 for my not-so-old, currently-deactivated-but-just-like-new iPhone. I don’t think I could get that much for my brain at this point. And yes, if you’re counting, I am now on my *fifth* iPhone – but have only paid for two, thank goodness.

*sigh*