Toilet water does not appear to be good for cell phones, as I dunked mine yesterday and now it is possessed. During a writing critique session last night, we kept hearing phantom beeps. I thought it was the radio. No. Then I thought it must be the other radio. I was turning switches like crazy. We finally traced it to my dunked phone. The off button didn't work, so I took the battery off and found water there. Uh-oh. I dried it and put the battery back on. It powered up by itself and called my husband (by itself).
"Why are you calling me?" he yelled at me from another part of the house.
"I'm not. My phone is," I yelled back.
Pushing the "stop" button wasn't stopping it. I took the battery off again. When I put it back on the second time, the little battery picture came on as "charging." Interesting.
It called my husband again. Might it call other people on my speed dial if I leave it on all night? Would my friends be mad at me for calling them in the middle of the night and not saying anything? And what if something WAS said? How scary would that be.
After I went to bed, I considered that I would have to wait until my husband had drunk some coffee this morning before breaking it to him we were going to have to buy another cell phone. He has this thing about his personality before he has had coffee. Think any "B" science fiction movie in which the monster is shooting people with his laser eyes, or the original King Kong in which he picks up people and is chewing on them with their legs sticking out of his mouth. And they're screaming while he crunch, crunch, crunches.
Let me follow this tangent for a moment here and say the first King Kong movie I saw was the Jessica Lange one in the 1970s. I thought it was good. Then I saw the one in which I really hoped Jack Black would get killed throughout the movie because he was so scuzzy, but if he had been, he couldn't deliver the clincher line next to the large hairy body. "It wasn't planes that killed Kong. It was beauty that killed the beast." But when I saw the 1933 version, I thought, "Why?" Why did they ever do a remake when this version could never be improved on? Ah, the hubris of Hollywood.
Other than the body-chewing scenes, there is another scene in which Fay Wray is swimming in a lagoon. It is quite a sensuous scene, with the wet fabric clinging to Fay's curves, and I have to tell you, I still can't believe the censors would have ever let that scene in the movie. I'm not complaining. Fay was just too darn pretty for us not to have the lagoon scene. And I really can see why Kong loved her so. Although, you know, interspecies relationships rarely work out. You just have to have more in common, you know? And Kong eating people is probably something Fay would not be able to overcome. But, oh, the tender looks he casts her way. How tragic. It kind of reminds me of the stares I was giving the roast beef sandwich the other day, but I digress (yet again).
Do you know when Fay died, they cut off the lights of the Empire State Building for 15 minutes in honor of her? And I know it was because of the lagoon scene.
Women in clingy wet clothes can inspire mightily. A cell phone in a toilet is just tragic.
I opened the phone, turned it over, and left it to dry all night. I hoped maybe letting it rest and leaving it alone would fix it.
I know you've done that with your computer or your car, so don't act like you haven't. Well, this time it actually worked! This morning, my phone (which I think I will dub "Fay") was working as well as before the involuntary dip. Now all that is left to do is wipe it down a few more times with some Clorox wipes.