"I found my iPhone by the cheese"

Jefferson Graham | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption The oddest place I lost my phone Jefferson Graham talks to consumers about the weirdest place they ever left their smartphone, on #TalkingTech

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — The other day I opened the refrigerator to find something to eat, and was surprised to find a chilled iPhone by the cheese.

My wife had left it there by mistake a few hours earlier, and couldn’t locate its whereabouts.

That seemed pretty funny, so I posted a photo on Facebook. It turned out many people have some pretty amazing stories about where they left their phone by accident, as you can see in the accompanying video and podcast.

Where's the oddest place you ever left your phone?

We've got the transportation woes. Harold Zuckerman left it behind charging at the Buenos Aires airport, while Sheryl Northrup forgot her phone in a Las Vegas cab. She was able to get it back when the next passenger found it, and gave her a call--25 miles away. "But it was a long drive and took hours off of a busy work day," she says.

In the life happens department--Jody Privette Young realized she had left her phone up on a tree--after she climbed back down.

It was always there. Michelle Wolfe recalled her 14-year-old daughter running around the family home in Tampa, desperately trying to find her phone. Mom and dad reached for the Find my iPhone app from Apple, which makes an audible sound and shows you on a map (viewable on the computer) where exactly the phone is. "It was right there in her back pocket."

Wolfe's friend Heather, who declined to give her last name, told USA TODAY of the time she was rushing to get out the house, and on the phone, running around, and trying to find it. "It was one of those moments when you're multi-tasking, and not getting enough done, because you're multitasking too much."

Elle Waters told us she lost her phone, only to find it three days later in melted Michigan snow. She had inadvertently dropped it in the show earlier. Like my wife, she also left her iPhone in the fridge--in the freezer.

"I was getting ice cream," she says. "It took me 3 hours to figure out. I was getting all these calls." Phone was find, even frozen.

Have you ever lost your phone in the car? Steve Vitalich did. He has bluetooth in the car, so he heard the phone ring, and could talk on it in the car, but he couldn't locate the missing device.

"It took me a day to figure out," he says. "I had to tear apart the car."

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