Kids, I'm going to tell you a story. Don't worry; I'll make it brief. It won't take eight years or anything.
St. Patrick's Day, 2007; a few friends had dragged me to this wild party at some club with a name I can't remember. What I do remember is the noise, the obnoxious drunk guys, and that it was the night I lost my favorite umbrella.
To put things plainly, it was a rotten evening. I'd just gotten dumped a few days prior by some jerk I met at an art convention, and the last thing I'd wanted to be doing was partying. But, despite my reluctance, I let the girls drag me out.
It's ironic now, looking back on that night. I ended up sitting alone for the majority of the time I was there, fending off drunken advances and making sure the girls didn't go home with any major assholes. Needless to say, I felt out of place. Even when I wasn't post-dumped me, big parties were never my thing. Not even in college. It had to be around midnight when the place finally started to clear out, and I found myself alone. I'd hailed cabs for all of my friends to get them home safely, but in the process there wasn't one left for me to take. So, I'd wandered back inside and sat down on the garbage covered couch to wait a while, hoping a few more would pass by later.
When I sat down, I instantly leapt back up; I'd sat right on a cellphone. Someone must have lost it. It was a shame, too; it looked new; nice; expensive.
Being as curious as I was, I'd convinced myself that the right thing to do would be to look through it a bit and see if I could figure out who the owner was.
He didn't have many contacts; there was a list of people from work, and then a few extra numbers on speed dial; Marshall and Lily Erikson, Barney Stinson and Robin Scherbatsky.
Being a new phone, there weren't many personalized features or photographs, so there was no way for me to know who the owner was. I suppose I could have called one of the contacts and told them I found the phone, but what would I say? I was awkward enough as it is without trying to explain that I'd found this person's phone when I sat on the couch of an abandoned nightclub after my friends all went home. No, I couldn't do that. So I did what any sensible awkward girl would do;
I took the phone home with me. I was so wrapped up in figuring out who it belonged to before making any calls that I entirely forget to grab my umbrella on the way out, and didn't realize it until the next day. But, when I went back to get it, it was gone.
Years later, I found out the phone belonged to your father. To this day, no conversation between us has been quite as awkward as the time he found the phone he lost six years before we started dating tucked away in my underwear drawer.