On Flushing My Cell Phone

(Found this little ditty this morning in a "My Writings" folder on my computer. Don't know why but I feel like sharing.)

So, I’m in the bathroom stall, having just finished up #2. [No, don’t stop, it gets better] I stood and pulled up the trousers and my cell phone, a small Nokia one in a case clipped to my belt, fell on the floor. With my right hand holding up my pants, I reached down with my left hand and retrieved the phone. My belt still hung loosely on my waist. I clipped the phone to my left side (it’s usual place) and I activated the flush with my right foot. Can’t be too careful with germs, you know.

So, I brought my left hand around to the front of my pants in order to start tucking in my shirt and complete the redressing process and, as fortune would dictate, it hit my phone. Now, you can debate whether or not the phone was 100% clipped to my belt or not but, nonetheless, something happened. My phone disengaged from my belt and sailed into the basin. Thankfully, at this point, all of the ‘stuff’ was gone and the ‘afterflush’ was now proceeding.

My phone didn't hit the seat, the rim, or even the inside walls of the john. It landed directly in the center and bottom of the bowl. And, to make matters more perfect, it didn't land askew, with one side up on the ‘rim’ of the center bowl, thus, making it easier to grab. No, it landed directly into the center of the bowl, in a nearly perfect perpendicular direction to the wall. This also had the benefit of being in the perfect position to have the afterflush, forceful as all public toilets are, force it up into the porcelain tunnel and over the hump that all toilets have.

Instinctively, I thrust out my left hand (my right was still holding up my trousers don't forget, my shirt still only half tucked) directly into the rushing water, grabbing vainly for my phone. It never occured to me that, were I successful, the phone wouldn't work. Perhaps it was my added pressure or the readjustment of the water because of my hand but my phone began to move upward, slowly, over the hump. My hand followed and I could, with about two fingers and my thumb, grab the base of the phone. Plastic and neoprene, the material of my phone case, can get quite slippery when it gets wet, ironic considering those kinds of cases are supposed to evoke beaches and surfing. Moreover, the case itself must have filled with water, making it a ‘torpedo’ and better able to glide through water. As a result, the phone tipped over the porcelain hump and into the great beyond.

I stood there in disbelief, with a dripping left hand, wet pants, and waited for the phone to return to my side of the hump. Perhaps it was only in an alcove that my hand couldn,t find, I thought, as I got some toilet paper to wipe my left hand. It was contaminated, after all. Perhaps the phone would somehow be too heavy for the usual contents of these pipes and be vomited back into the john like a cellular case of heartburn.

Alas, it was not meant to be. And I now have a new phone. The number’s the same so give me a call. ;-)