Terry Prone: Help! I can see where my lost iPad is — but that's not going to get it back
Almost 500 United Airlines flights go in and out of Newark every day: If just one idiot like me leaves belongings behind, that’s 500 items the airline's lost and found people have to deal with.
The worst thing is being able to see it, courtesy of technology that promises to find your device. The technology is like one of those microchips inserted in your cat so that if it is faithless and someone finds it somewhere it shouldn’t be, they can have the chip read by a vet and get you contacted to come fetch your feline. Simple. Emotionally rewarding.
The equivalent technology for iPads and other wandering devices may be simple, but it isn’t, in my experience, emotionally rewarding.
My devoted readers — all three of them — will be aware that 10 days ago, I left my iPad on a United Airlines flight from Florida to Newark, in preparation for flying home to Ireland.
Having copped on to my idiocy three hours before my next flight, I got ticked off by a United lost property person for not checking that I had all my personal belongings before exiting the flight, according to the instructions, and went through all the formal retrieval processes before embarking on the flight to Dublin.
This ushered in the latest instalment of my lifelong battle with Lost and Found.
Lost Property departments know me well. I have always lost things. It’s not a function of advancing age. Or perhaps I should say it’s not JUST a function of advanced age.
In fact, it may be convincing evidence of how deeply-ingrained habits can withstand advancing years. Put it this way: When it comes to losing things, I am the same, as an old fart as I was as a kid. Only worse.
I never, in my school years, had to rely on the dog eating my homework excuse, partly because we didn’t have a dog but mainly because I lost the copybook on the way home.
Later, as a young mother, my recurring maternity nightmare was that I had left my baby on a bus. This never actually happened, but a dream carries more emotional heft than boring reality, and in this dream, I left the newborn on a bus and consequently had to visit the then lost property section of the then CIE, where the surly man in charge told me the lost babies were “over there”.
“Over there” signifying a roundy yoke like you’d stick umbrellas in, except that all the slots were occupied by neatly-swaddled babies, who all looked the same, so the screaming-wake-me-please section of the nightmare was me realising I couldn’t distinguish my particular baby from all the others, and could hardly take one at random, tempting though that was as a time-management option.
Things have improved since then, in terms of the attitude of public transport staff.
Just four weeks ago, for example, I left a dress in the overhead rack of a train, and the lost & found guy in Heuston Station couldn’t have been more courteous as he went to some trouble to see if the garment could be found.
It couldn’t. Although I’ll check, next time I’m there. You never know, although, to be honest, the find rate in my history of losing things isn’t stellar.
Losing things has cost me a fortune. I have something in common with those American graduates who are still paying back student loans in their 70s. Me, I’m working just to pay for losing stuff.
Until the iPad, the most expensive thing I ever lost was the diamond eternity ring my late husband brought to the maternity hospital the day after our son was born.
That one, I managed to lose within 24 hours, so that when said husband arrived to take the two of us home, he found me face-swollen, eyes half closed from crying, and was thereby allowed to prove himself a) the best in the world, and b) the master of generous quotations when he said:
Since then, I have lost all the usual things, including my car, most notably the latter in the Mater car park, which is designed for failure and forced exercise as you search one level after another, muttering a promise that you will never, as long as you live, park in this benighted site again.
I’ve lost my passport (in Geneva), boarding passes, credit cards, remote controls, shoes, skirts, keys, receipts, and — when someone broke into a previous home of mine — my wallet.
Anything with your name and contact points on it provokes the kindness of strangers so that before I had even frozen my bank card after the home invasion, someone contacted me to say they’d found my wallet in a hedge and would I like them to drop it to me.
Still, the iPad may be the most challenging.
I know that United Airlines has almost 500 flights going into Newark every day and if just one idiot like me leaves some personal belonging behind them, that’s 500 items.
Which is why United’s lost property form seeks to get every possible identifier of the lost item from you, as my American guardian angel, Suzi, found out when she rang them.
A helpful call centre guy told her that anything distinguishing her (my) item from the totality of abandoned possessions would allow the person who, now and then, actually walks through the lost property building to notice, even register the iPad.
Suzi told them about the “Sink the Rich” sticker on the top of my iPad. She didn’t tell him the sticker came with a book by Bernie Sanders. The lost property guy on the phone might be Maga, and you don’t want to disincentivise someone who might contribute to your rescue.
Meanwhile, back in Ireland, Aoife, my office guardian angel, decided my iPad was not going to come back, disinterred an old one, stuck a new keyboard on it, and assumed I would be fine.
Except that I have about 300 passwords and trying to set up any single platform when you don’t know the right one is the most soul-destroying activity.
Now, I know that every item left behind on a flight at least has sentimental value (other than a KitKat, and even the loss of one of those might create a lump in the throat). And I know that the office will have proper insurance on the iPad, which was at least six years old and had seen some rough handling. No financial loss, then.
But — United Airlines, are you listening? — that’s not the point.
The point is that I have two nearly completed books in manuscript form on that iPad. Jonathan Williams, my wonderful literary agent, rang me three days ago to ask about progress on the first.
I didn’t actually lie to him, but I didn’t tell the full truth, either.
That is the sad tale of a manuscript locked into a device the location of which we can all see, but not rescue.
Read More
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
