When You Forget Your Phone in the Toilet

There is a sound a phone makes when it meets water that is not a splash. It is a small, expensive goodbye.

I had carried it in because I am a modern person, which is another way of saying I cannot be alone with my thoughts for four minutes. The video was funny. I laughed. I shifted. The phone left my hand with the confidence of something that had never been dropped and did not intend to start today.

It started today.

Retrieval is a moral test

I will spare you the choreography. Know only that I washed my hands before and after, and also during, and that the phone came up looking offended. Water left it in a thin, judgemental stream. The screen flashed, thought about my choices, and went black.

In the mirror I looked like a man who had just received news.

The internet, which had helped me into this situation, also had a plan to get me out. Rice, it said. A bowl of uncooked rice. Bury the phone. Wait. Apologise to the rice, which had other ambitions.

The group chat

I borrowed my sister's phone to tell the group I would be quiet for a while.

'Why?' asked Tobi, who asks why the way other people breathe.

'Small accident,' I wrote.

'Define small.'

I defined it. The chat went quiet, which is how you know a joke is being assembled by committee. Then the messages arrived in a stack.

'Rip.'

'We will remember the memes.'

'Did you flush your contacts?'

'This is why I told you to get a case.'

I had a case. The case is in the bathroom, dry, judging me from the sink where I had placed it so the phone could be 'free.' Freedom was the problem.

The aftermath

The rice did what rice does, which is not data recovery. The phone returned to life two days later at 14 percent, with a wallpaper of my own face looking optimistic. A few photos had survived. The notes app opened on a grocery list: tomatoes, soap, dignity. I had not written the third one. I added it.

I still take the phone with me. I am not a changed man. I am a man with a lanyard around his wrist like a toddler in a mall, and a new respect for rooms that were designed before we all became so reachable.

If you need me, knock. I might be in there. I will answer. With my voice.