Bioluminescence and Loosing my Connection to my Local World

Friday, I lost my connection to my local world - my cell phone. 

I went to the beach at night with some friends and left my shorts on the beach to swim in the ocean at night.  I thought that since I just had my phone and key and a little money in my pockets it was fine.  There was nobody around and I thought we could see our stuff the whole time. 

When we returned to our pile of clothes a few minutes later and I put on my shorts, I noticed that the lump in my pocket was no longer there.  The air caught in my chest as I realized one of my most guarded possessions was missing. 

I must have dropped my things in the sand while I was carrying my shorts, I thought.  My friend found a guy with an ipad and we used that as a light, searching up and down the beach.  Finally, I gave up... assuming that I had dropped the things and that the tide had already come in enough to make them gifts to the ocean. 

It was only the next day when another friend recounted her story of the night that I put the pieces together.  She told us that her friends had decided to go skinny dipping and made a pile of their clothes on the beach.  When they got back, all of their clothes were missing.... as were their wallets.  They thought they would have to take a taxi home - naked, but some other people on the beach gave them shirts to wear and plastic bags for the boys to wear as diapers. Later, luckily, they found a pile of their clothes somewhere else on the beach. 

After hearing this story, I realized that my things had in fact been stolen.  I did an experiment where I put the same things in my pockets and held the shorts upside down.  Nothing fell out.  I remembered that it was weird that the other girl's clothes were on top of mine... when I left them next to hers.  I remembered that we had trouble finding our clothes and that I thought I just lost our palm tree reference point on the horizon that I had planned.  It all made sense. 

While it still freaks me out a little that all this happened while I thought I could see the beach, I learned some valuable lessons. 
1.  Don't leave anything on the beach - especially at night.
2. The connections I have here are real.... and are more than just phone numbers that you can loose - the people that belong to those numbers still exist.
3. It is pretty easy to recollect numbers as this town is so small. 
4. I can get through something as upsetting and unsettling as loosing my students' numbers and having to change my own.... twice in two days. 
5. Ticos are very understanding of things like this and don't seem surprised at all when you tell them the story of why you have a new number. 
6. At least with all that I lost this night (I was ok and my friend had money and a key to get us home), I still got to splash in the bioluminescence and that might have made the whole thing worth it.