Clean Cell Phone...

I just remembered a funny little story from our evacuation two weeks ago, during the fires. We drove from our home in Jamul to a friend's house in Chula Vista, Debbie in my pickup and me in our RV. We talked to each other during the drive via our cell phones – so I knew I had remembered to bring mine. But...shortly after we arrived at our friend's home, my cell phone disappeared. I wrote it off in my mind as a trivial cost considering what we were doing, and didn't worry about it.

But a couple of days later, Debbie came in from our friend's garage, laughing, and holding my cell phone. It was dripping wet and covered with soapy spots – she had just fished it out of the washing machine. Apparently I left the thing in my pocket, and into the laundry it went.

It looked completely hopeless, but just for form's sake I took it apart, rinsed it out, and set it in a sunny window to warm up and dry out. The next day I plugged it in, and to my surprise the “charging” indicator showed up on the screen – a substantial amount of the phone has to be functional for that to happen. After it charged for a while, I turned it on – and it worked! Better than ever, actually – the keyboard used to have some sticky keys, but now they all worked perfectly.

My phone is a cheap, bottom-of-the-line Nokia that I paid $29 for at Wal-Mart. Something tells me that if we had laundered my wife's feature-laden, $299 cell phone, the results would not have been as happy…