Friday, January 7, 2011

Cell Phone + Water = Oops

I narrowly escaped disaster this week. I almost destroyed Ben's phone.

See, it was my Wednesday off, and I was sitting on the floor of the living room with Noah, working on a Lego creation. We were quite intent. And by that, I mean, I was intent and Noah was alternating between having pretend Lego fights with pretend Lego superheroes and tormenting Canada by batting balloons at his face.

Sophie walked up to me with a plastic cup about 1/4 full of water that I'd been drinking from earlier that day. She apparently found it on the kitchen table and thought it would be useful to cart with her around the house.

I, in my infinite wisdom, snatched the cup away from her and said, "oh, thank you Sophie," in a truly patronizing tone that I'm sure drives her crazy, and fully intended to put the cup away somewhere where she couldn't reach it. Only, because I was also in the middle of this very intense Lego construction, instead of getting up and putting it in the sink or something along those lines, I glanced quickly around for a reasonable 'hiding' spot. I decided on the arm of the recliner that was directly next to me. It is one of the those recliners where the arms open up, and one of them has a deep storage cavity inside. I set it in there.

And promptly forgot about it.

I really meant to properly take care of it as soon as I completed my state-of-the-art Lego design. But, as per usual, I got distracted and was soon consumed with my normal daily activities like prying Toy Story figurines from Canada's toothy grip, chasing Sophie out of the kitchen drawer where she's discovered that a box of matches is super-fun to play with, and stopping Noah from lining up all our DVDs along the floor to use as lily pads in his pretend frog world.

So, the next morning, as I'm getting the kids ready, Noah confiscated Ben's phone. It's a Droid, which Noah can navigate about ten times better than I can, and he regularly finds it, grabs it, and goes off in a corner somewhere to play some Mario or other weird little game.

The scene: Noah has the Droid, mindlessly tapping the screen while he walks into the living room. I'm getting Sophie dressed. Noah sees me, grins widely, opens up the arm of the recliner, drops the phone in, shuts the arm, and merrily goes on his way.

That's when I remembered.

Noah didn't intend to cause any trouble. He had no idea there was a cup of water in there. I think he was trying to prove what a super kid he is by putting the phone down before I had to ask him to.

I immediately abandoned Sophie, one arm through her neck hole and the other arm trapped inside her shirt, to retrieve and recover the phone. Ben was upstairs in the shower -- so before I broke the horrible news to him, I shook the water loose from the phone and tried to turn it on.

Ben told me later that was a horrible idea.

Some weird black screen appeared that didn't look normal at all, with weird gibberish-like words, so I quickly turned it off and popped out the battery.

Ben was not terribly excited to learn of the morning's adventures.

But, we sat it in rice for a day and a half, tested it tonight, and it has been fully salvaged. Hooray.

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