Phone, Wallet, Keys?

You know those days when you think you’re just taking your kid to get new glasses, but it somehow ends with Adam Sandler torturing strangers across Toronto in the name of justice? Yeah… that kind of day.

Our quest began, as all proper adventures do, with a stop at the coffee shop. Coffee for me (because I require emotional support caffeine) and a croissant for Wren, who, at six, already has impeccable taste. Then came the rainy public transit shuffle: bus → streetcar → walk → pray for mercy. In the downpour, Wren wielded my umbrella like a tiny knight of chaos, accidentally whacking passersby with alarming precision.

At the optometrist’s, the sweetest woman alive, Wren got his new glasses and looked about ten IQ points smarter instantly. To celebrate, we hit the toy store, where he fell in love with a kid-sized umbrella. Full circle moment. He offered to do chores to earn money for it, and I, of course, agreed enthusiastically. We bought the umbrella and headed home, smugly confident that all was right with the world.

Now, Drew has a system. (Don’t judge us.) When we lose a phone (which with four kids, we do often, but only in the house), he sends a magic message that plays a song on repeat. My song? Adam Sandler’s “Phone, Wallet, Keys. (explicit language)” If you’ve heard it, you understand that this is less of a song and more of a checklist for travel disguised as comedy.

So Drew and Elijah, modern-day Batman and Robin, minus the muscles and with slightly better snacks, set out to find the phone. Using Apple’s FindMy app and Drew’s magic song system, They tracked it through pawn shop territory and what Drew described as “an electronic chop shop with very buff men.” He insisted these people might just be “mixed up” and that it was probably all a misunderstanding.

Meanwhile, I had already written the mental headline: “Local woman’s phone stolen by Toronto’s least competent criminals.” I had no doubts these people were phone thieves, caught mid-heist, now being righteously punished by relentless Adam Sandler. Because if justice has a sound, it’s a man yelling “Phone, Wallet, Keys” every 21 to 93 seconds for two and a half hours.

And then… the twist.

Drew got a call. A man said his wife found my phone and wanted to return it. The couple refused any reward, despite Drew’s kind offer. Naturally, Drew took this as proof that humanity is good and the world is full of decent people. I, on the other hand, remain convinced that Sandler broke them. They’d simply reached the “please make it stop” stage of conscience. I think Drew could have collected money from them.

And somewhere in Toronto, a few people learned that the real punishment for petty crime isn’t jail time. It’s Adam Sandler on repeat.

So what’s your answer? Did incessantly playing Adam Sandler return the phone, or are people genuinely nice in Toronto?