I washed my cell phone

sb10064795b-001And now it doesn’t work. In my defense…well, I don’t have one. I left the phone in the pocket of a jacket I threw into the washer, but didn’t realize that until I threw the jacket in the dryer, and heard an ominous thumping noise.

The thing was Old School to the extreme. I bought it for $9 during the Clinton era, which makes it something of an antique.  It didn’t take photos. It didn’t connect me to the Internet. Before its watery grave, it barely even make phone calls unless I held the two parts — the numbers-part and the screen-display-part — together. I would sometimes get a little message-waiting indicator tone, and find six messages from the past three days, all  lined up for my attention.

It is not like me to wash a phone, but I was hard on it. I lost  it, kicked it, and dropped into a toilet. You will always know how much you love a family member if you drop your phone in a (public) toilet, fish it out, and take the call anyway, because it’s your son on the other end and you love him. 

And yet for all its quirks, it was my phone and as much as you can love technology that will always let you down, I loved that phone. At this point, I am so due for an upgrade I assume they will give me both a phone and a pony, but somehow, that doesn’t give me much comfort.

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3 Responses to I washed my cell phone

  1. One summer, I dropped a cell phone in a swimming pool, then dropped the replacement phone in a vat of chlorine less than a week later! RIP to your old cell phone — good luck finding a new phone that doesn’t serve as a dual Internet provider/video camera/coffee-maker.

    Also, your phone survived being dropped in a toilet? It must have incredible Clinton-era powers…

    • Do you find that cell phones respond well to bleach? And yes, the thing was in a toilet and it started vibrating, so I reached in and it was my son. I nearly told him what had just happened, but I don’t need to give him any more funny stories to tell at my eventual wake, so we had what probably sounded like a normal conversation, with me gagging on the other end. Just got back from the phone store, where I got a shiny phone that doesn’t make coffee, but will stir my oatmeal. Tee-hee.

  2. Hey, Susan -

    Sorry I’ve been so long in commenting. I’ve kept up with reading all your posts, but am way behind in responding.

    As for today’s – I wish you luck with your new cell phone.

    Mine is at least 10 years old, if not older (but one piece), and I don’t want a new one. It’s for emergencies only and is only on when I’m in the car going somewhere. I don’t know how to do anything on it (which isn’t much to begin with) except scroll down my short “quick list” to find the correct family member’s first name and hit send. Other than that, I’m at a loss. Even to retrieve messages.

    Tom has a fairly new fancy Blackberry Pearl and I can’t even figure out how to ANSWER the stupid thing! Every time I try to do so, the call is lost, the screen morphs to something else – it’s ridiculous. And, I sure can’t type on the thing or any of the 1,987 things it does.

    So . . . do you have your new one all programmed yet? And how many things can you do with it so far? Good luck!

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