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E-mail StoryHerb Benham: A good reason to never take your cell phone to the bathroom
| Wednesday, Jul 9 2008 10:42 AM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Jul 9 2008 2:08 PM
Last week, I dropped my cell phone in the toilet.
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One minute, I was standing at the sink, holding the phone and then I wasn’t holding it because it had slipped out of my hand and ploppd into the drink, where it lay, swimming as if awaiting rescue.
Like most people, I pride myself on some measure of hand-eye coordination.
I can juggle three lemons, switch hands when I am eating a blueberry bagel and drinking a cold glass of cranberry juice, and transfer a cell phone back and forth between my left and right ears without a lag in the conversation.
However, every so often, there is a hand-eye mishap. A freak-out of sorts. One minute you are holding a phone, and the next, you are not.
I don’t think there is anybody who has owned a cell phone and brought it into the bathroom who has not imagined a worst-case scenario that does not involve death by water. It is not unlike riding in the back of a pickup.
Part of it is the thrill of survival. “I rode in the back of the truck and was not catapulted out.” “I held my phone over water and nothing happened.”
However, this time something happened and I looked down and thought, “Oh my God, my cell phone and all that it contains is in the toilet.”
I reached down and snatched the phone cleanly out of the water. I wondered if the three-second rule applied. Were cell phones like diving watches? Good to go at 70 feet below the surface?
I wiped it on my shirt — first one side, then the other. I quickly turned it off, thinking that maybe if the phone was in the off position that the water wouldn’t ruin the electronics. Then I turned it back on, hoping to confuse the little guy into thinking that it had never been dunked unceremoniously in the water like a volunteer in the dunk tank at the school carnival.
The blue background light on the phone appeared. Everything seemed normal. I now had two text messages and eight voice mails.
Eight voice mails? I had never had eight voice mails before. Had the phone enjoyed a conductivity boost because of the water, become extra sensitive and was now retrieving voice mails from any cell phone within two square miles?
I clicked on the voice mail to see who it was that had called. No voice mail. No voice mail monitor announcing that I had eight voice mails.
Nothing. Just silence. Followed by more silence.
Well, wasn’t this interesting? The phone was collecting voice mails, mine and perhaps other people’s, but I couldn’t listen to them.
Discomfort was followed by relief. I had voice mails. But since I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I did not feel compelled to call anybody back.
I’ve figured out the solution to the whirl of technology. Accidentally drop your phone into the toilet. Then count to three, and keep on counting.
Opinions expressed are those of Herb Benham, not The Californian.