First World Problems
Yup! It finally happened to me! 3 years of being my best friend, my sole companion during bathroom breaks and I finally plopped her (yes my phone is a woman!) into the ceramic throne. When I heard the dreadful splash just after I got up to pull my pants up, I froze with fear for a second before my reflexes took over and I reached into the pot of golden yellow liquid, unimpeded by thoughts of the bowl’s contents. When she was out of the bowl was when I began to panic. What now? Thoughts of what I had just put my hand in also began to poke at the corner of my mind. No time for that, I told myself, need to dry the phone first! I ripped out a bunch of toilet paper and wrapped it around my phone while trying to organize my thoughts further. Rice! I had read somewhere and heard from the mouths of some apparently tech savvy people that dunking the phone in rice would help get any water (yeah sure it was just water) out. So I rushed downstairs, reached into the pantry to grab a bag of rice but that’s when the contents of the toilet bowl that I had just fished the phone out of hit me. I couldn’t possibly put the phone in the whole bag of rice and contaminate it so I poured some rice in the nearest bowl I could find and put the phone in it. There that was it. With nothing else to do but wait, I decided to get some lunch and check on the phone’s progress afterwards.
About half an hour later, I went to get the phone and it was still on. Actually one of my running songs had been playing the entire time it was in the bowl but there was no sound. I didn’t worry about it. I figures I had it on silent or something but seeing the phone apparently working fine, I plugged in my earphones and proceeded to turn on a mindless show on YouTube (it’s what I usually do when I have housework to do) only to realize there was no sound coming though the headphones. I turned the phone off and then back on, texted a few friends, turned the volume to full and still no sound. Just when I began to think that maybe it was only the sound that had been affected by the unfortunate accident, the phone turned off. Black and silent, she refused to cooperate. I realized, panicking again, that the phone was probably not dry, so I ran back to the bathroom, turned on my hair dryer to cool and low, blew mildly warm air into all the phone’s visible orifices from a safe distance. After about 10 mins, still no response. By this time a friend had returned home unexpectedly early, and I rushed to him telling him of my predicament. He asked me if I had turned the phone off. Too embarrassed to admit I hadn’t, I let him think I did. He then asked me if I’d taken out the SIM. Erm…no…how the hell do you take out the SIM in an iPhone? He showed me how and after successfully removing it, he dunked it into the bag of rice. I stared in horror, afraid to tell him how and where the phone had acquired the damaging moisture. It needs to stay in there for at least 24 hours, he said, but how had it gotten wet? Ummmm….I told him I had accidentally dropped it into a bowl of water in the sink while doing dishes. Yeah…. no I couldn’t tell him what really happened. Only you people know what really happened!
So my best friend of 3 years, my phone, now lies in a bag of rice, unaware of what the future holds. Will she come back? Will this be the end of Afrolivia’s iPhone4 (yes 4, that wasn’t a typo)? Is it safe to cook that bag of rice after the phone comes out of it (no seriously I don’t want to throw out a whole bag of rice!)? Will I survive a day without my phone? Stay tuned for updates!
