The Morning So Far

Today went well right up until I dropped the cell phone into the toilet.

The phone was in my pocket, as it often is. I went into the bathroom. You don’t need to know why. I was in the bathroom, minding my own business.

A text message came in. I read it, answered it, and set the phone down on the vanity top. A few minutes later, I picked up my phone and turned to go out the door. The phone flew out of my hand and landed with an unmistakable wet "plop." I whirled around, reached into the toilet, and pulled the phone out.

Okay, spare me the "eews" of disgust. A toilet may be a toilet, but this one had nothing in it but cold clear water.

Now, I know that water is bad for cell phones. I also know that putting a cell phone in the oven on a low temperature to dry out only works if you remember to take the phone out of the oven before the phone is crispy.

So I quickly took a towel to my phone, drying it as well as I could, then I pulled out a hair dryer and blew it dry for a few minutes. Then I realized I’d better check the insides. I opened the back cover, and sure enough, there was water in there. Took the battery out, dried battery and phone with towel and blow dryer. Then I thought I’d better check under the sim card. I pulled that out, and it was wet, too.

My hope for the phone’s survival was ebbing but I still had to do my best to reclaim it. I dried the sim card, blow dried its slot, and then, well, then I made a mistake. I tried to blow dry the sim card as it was resting in my hand.

Sim cards are light. They are wispy little pieces of cardboard with microchip technology on one side. When I turned the blow dryer on mine, it dried for a second, and then it twirled into the air, spun around, and plummeted to the bathroom floor, where it disappeared. It was magic. I watched it fall, I thought I saw where it landed, but it wasn’t there, or anywhere.

By this time I felt like I was channeling Lucy Ricardo, and was ready to throw my head back, open my mouth, and bawl, "Aaaaaaaaaah!"

But I didn’t. Instead I set down the blow dryer, went and got a flashlight, and did an inch by inch inspection of the bathroom floor. I found the sim card back under the bottom edge of the vanity cabinet, in the shadow. I dried it off with a towel again, and moved the whole operation to the kitchen table, where my phone is now resting, in pieces, high and oh I do hope dry. After a while, I’ll put it back together and see if it works anymore. I’ll be happy if it does, and sad if it doesn’t. Meanwhile, I can go back to whatever it was I had planned to do today. What was that? Oh, yeah. I was going to write a column.

Brief update: I have had surgery. It was not as serious a surgery as I was expecting, because a second round of tests found less serious cells and the surgeon decided to take a more conservative approach. The surgery went well, thanks, and the pathology reports afterward were about what I expected. I will be given drugs to discourage cells that could turn on me, and I have to be checked out every six months from now on.

As my father’s aged Uncle Asa said when we had to pull over to the side of Highway 101 so he could pee on the way home from a Giants game, "Getting old is hell."

And yet, we continue to prefer it to the alternative