A Tale of Two Blackberries....

....and the wonderful people behind them.

Blackberry #1: Belongs to me. Faithfully I brought it each day to the work site, reading emails on the 40-minute bus ride to and from Pascagoula. Like the responsible adult that I am, I took along my charger and plugged it in every other day.

Sometime on Friday morning I noticed it wasn't in my tool apron, where I'd kept it all week. I had an unsettling thought that I'd dropped it somewhere, but hoped I had left it in the hotel room.

Not so. I officially proclaimed it lost when the Knight Foundation staff and friends met for dinner on Friday evening following our final work day at our Habitat sites. My colleague Paul notified T Mobile immediately and I assumed that Mr. Blackberry was gone for good.

Blackberry #2: Saturday morning I was exhausted and rattled about losing my friend. At least that's my explanation for leaving my bag behind on the shuttle bus from the Beau Rivage to the airport. Not only did I not have my wallet and ID at that point, but I realized I was without a communications device in case anyone called to tell me they had found my bag.

I mourned appropriately, and then fantasized about how neat it would be to own a RED version of the Blackberry Curve. Sweet! No more looking for a black PDA in the bowels of a black purse! No, the beautiful cherry red of my new Blackberry would stand out, and make me look hip as well!

Polly Talen, my colleague from St. Paul, MN, graciously offered the use of her Blackberry. For her, this was a TREMENDOUS sacrifice. I think she uses her Blackberry more than her laptop to communicate with people. Yet she could tell what a spot I was in and she responded with kindness. Since it was a Saturday, it meant she wouldn't get it back until Tuesday at the earliest.

As it turned out, I only needed to make a couple of calls. But Polly had left on the same flight I was supposed to take. Her Blackberry was mine until sometime Monday.

Blackberry #1: With all the rain that fell on Friday there was no way my Blackberry could have survived the deluge. I was certain it had drowned in a puddle somewhere near our job site. Or been crushed by the trample of feet, wheelbarrows, golf carts, trash trucks, semis hauling sod, etc. And I was certain I could request a beautiful, swell new RED Blackberry as a replacement. All I had to do was figure out how to position my request, which, let's face it, came from a position of weakness ("I screwed up and lost my Blackberry.") as opposed to a position of strength ("I was rescuing people who were lost at sea and my Blackberry fell out of my pocket as I plucked the last one who was clinging to life on a small rubber dinghy.")

You can imagine how my fantasy was interrupted by the jarring reality of receiving an email on Monday of this week from a man named Bracky Cooper, who said he saw my blog, the name was familiar, and he had my Blackberry (thanks, Bracky, for reading my blog! :) He offered to return it.

Blackberry #2: On Monday I overnighted it to my colleague Polly, making a mental note regarding the typeface she had selected, the layout, and the action photo of her daughter that she used as wallpaper. I had Blackberry layout envy and vowed to unlock the mysteries of how she had set up her screen so I could do the same. Polly received her Blackberry on Tuesday, a little more than 72 hours after she had lent it to me. I'm sure they were among the longest 72 hours of her life.

Blackberry #1: Arrived today. I didn't have high hopes about the state it would be in. I was certain it would be a shorted-out, waterlogged piece of junk. Figuring it was ruined, my colleague Philip Francis wanted me to send it to him so he could take it apart.

IT WORKS PERFECTLY. Not a scratch on it. There's the whole SIM card and registration issue to deal with, but somehow my Blackberry was preserved from being drowned and run over. It's charged up, the phone works, and I've gotten over my Blackberry envy because I've reconfigured it to look like Polly's. What a journey it's been on! If only it could talk!

I'll talk for it instead. Thank you, thank you, good and honest people for a) lending me a Blackberry to use for a couple of days and b) for returning it ASAP and, a bonus thank you for c) reading my blog! :)