Losing Natalie Aunty

So... context first... I am spending a couple days in Dallas at a friend's house over Thanksgiving break, before I head off to New York for the rest of the week. (It's back to college soon). 

Dallas is apparently known for having a mall where you can ice skate in. My friends and I decided to take advantage of that and tried our hand at skating. It was my first time skating, and it was definitely interesting. Did I fall? Multiple times. Did it hurt? Not too much. Did I keep going? Absolutely!

So, getting to the story I want to share, we had all given our phones to Natalie Aunty, my friend's mom, whose house we were staying at. We had locked our shoes up in a little locker and she had the keys. So, she left to go find food (or atleast that's what we thought) and when we were done skating, she was nowhere to be seen. We tried to call her using a borrowed phone, but there was no answer. We waited near the rink for a little bit and then decided to split up to hunt her down. Now... we were in our socks. And this was a pretty fancy mall with designer-branded showrooms. We took a floor per pair (there were 4 of us) and started looking for her. 

We regrouped a few minutes later but none of us had had any luck. We hadn't found her. However, as we looked down on the skating rink, hoping she had made her way back there, we found her and called out to her. We learned that she went back to her car to find something and that information hadn't been conveyed properly. 

Now, between the time we found her and lost her, we were so close to going to Guest Services and asking them to page her, because we had not set a meet-up place or time. We didn't think about this kind of situation. 

What did we learn? Someone should keep their phone with them in a time like this, and pay attention to information.