In the last issue of The Fifth Floor, we asked our very talented alumni to send us a flash nonfiction piece capturing a moment in the life in 500 words or less. Pitt faculty member and MFA alumna Jennifer Lee has selected our winner as Dennis B. Ledden's "Misplaced Identity." About the short piece, Lee writes: "I like this story so much. What happens it utterly ordinary—a trip to the airport, a lost phone—but within this small moment is a whole relationship. Daughter loses phone, father finds it in the car, 'looking like a miniature version of the Monolith in the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.' The details tell us everything: her cell phone is gold, he’s got a flip phone. And when daughter proclaims at the end that 'You don’t exist without your iPhone,' dad lovingly agrees.
MISPLACED IDENTITY
by Dennis B. Ledden
My daughter, Allison, an administrative assistant for a booming San Francisco tech company, lost her gold cell phone after we dropped off her brother, Branden, at the Pittsburgh airport. She and I both panicked, thinking it may have fallen from the Corolla when she opened her door in front of the American Airlines departing flights entrance.
We had planned, after bidding good-bye to Branden, to drive into the city, sip coffee and tea in cafes, and shop at used book stores, then return to the airport so my daughter could catch her flight to California.
A minute or so after leaving the airport, though, Allison proclaimed, “I can’t find it anywhere!”
“Can’t find what?”
“My iPhone!”
I turned off the parkway at the first exit, pulled into an empty hotel parking lot, and shut off the engine. I then handed my flip cell phone to Allison so that she could call her number and get her phone’s location—no success—so, balancing her PC on her lap, she attempted to contact the iPhone’s locator.
I climbed out of the car, and, despite the harsh February wind, scrambled around the rear of the vehicle and opened the back door. I stooped down and ran my hand along the black carpeting under Allison’s seat, but found nothing. We, I assumed, would have to return to the airport in the hope that someone had turned in her phone.
I remember thinking as well how misplaced articles sometimes turn up in the most obvious places, so after I snapped the back door shut, I opened my daughter’s door—and there it was!—standing in the bottom pocket of her door, looking like a miniature version of the Monolith in the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I immediately removed it and, presenting it to Allison, inquired, “Lose something?”
“Oh my God, Dad! You don’t exist without your iPhone!”
"No, no, I guess I don't!"
Dennis B. Ledden
Dennis B. Ledden earned degrees in Secondary Education (BS) from Penn State, English Literature (MA) from the University of Pittsburgh, and Literature and Criticism (PhD) from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Having won recognition as an English teacher at Butler Intermediate High School, he retired as assistant teaching professor of English at Penn State’s University Park campus. His critical essays and reviews on modern American prose have appeared in literary journals, and he has presented his research at many academic conferences. He won third place in the 2017 Gulf Coast Writers Association poetry contest, and one of his poems was included in a recent edition of Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology of Present Day Best Poems (Contemporary Poetry, 2017). Dr. Ledden lives in Butler, Pa., with his wife, Yong Hui, who is artist-in-residence at Slippery Rock University. Their son, Brian, a graduate of Shady Side Academy, Pomona College, and the Nova School of Medicine, is flight surgeon with the U.S. Navy in Pensacola, Fla. Daughter Alicia, an alumna of Shady Side Academy and Carnegie Mellon University, is an assistant administrator at Uber headquarters in San Francisco.