** This article is a work of nonfiction based on actual events as shared with me by a friend who experienced them firsthand; used with permission. **
My friend, her husband, and their two children live on a farm. Everyone has a cell phone and they also have a landline that is used on rare occasions. The other day my friend called me up laughing hysterically. I asked her what was so funny.
She relayed this story to me. Over the years her husband used to forget his cell phone when he was out doing farm chores. She continued to remind him that it was smart to keep his cell phone with him in case he needed some help or something happened on their 10 acres while he was out doing chores.
My friend was in the house preparing dinner one evening when the landline rang. Her son answered it and it was my friend’s husband. The son handed the phone dutifully to his mother and went about his business. Suddenly, my friend burst out laughing. ‘You’re where?!’ my friend exclaimed. She pressed speaker phone just as her husband replied, ‘I’m in the chicken coop. Could you please come to the chicken coop and let me out? The door shut behind me and it’s just me and the chickens in here and they won’t show me how they sneak out.'
It took my friend a few minutes to stop laughing, but she finally put her boots on and headed out to the chicken coop to release her husband. He hasn’t forgotten to take his phone with him since that incident. He's never lived locking himself in the chicken coop down either. Now when he leaves the house everyone asks him ‘dad, did you remember your phone’? Have you ever been locked in an outbuilding and had to figure a way out or call for help?
© Lefty Graves. 2023 All Rights Reserved.
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