Dropping My iPhone In The Toilet
I have an absolutely terrible habit of watching Netflix on my iPhone. It has led to a disaster of epic proportions.
I’m one of the lucky ones who signed up for an unlimited data plan when they were first made available and have thus been grandfathered into the new system in which nobody is able to buy unlimited data anymore. This has forced me to abuse my 50-bucks-a-month data plan as much as possible, because if I don’t use it then the whole purpose of having the unlimited data plan will be lost. And the best way to use up data on your phone is to watch movies and TV shows. So pretty much everywhere I go, I watch Netflix.
Life has been beautiful.
I no longer go to the gym to work out. Instead, I go to the movies—which just happens to be inside my gym, where I watch The Big Lebowski on the Stairmaster.
I also no longer go to the bathroom. I go to the movies…where this patron has the opportunity to sit on a toilet bowl for as long as he wishes, even take his pants off, and watch The Grey. How can you beat it?
My universe was turned upside down last week.
I was at the toilet theater watching an episode of Revenge (god, that Amanda is such a @#$@) and was absolutely stunned when the evil mom ordered the murder of her best friend by having her thrown off an apartment building in New York City. “OH MY GOD!” I cried as I jumped up off of the toilet. Shocked, I violently shook my phone, and then, in slow motion, watched in horror as my phone slipped through my fingers and fell down toward the abyss of modern plumbing that connects all of us as Americans.
My entire life flashed before my eyes. I remembered my childhood. I remembered going crabbing at Albert’s Landing. I remember my first kiss in eighth grade (yes, I was sort of a player). I saw my future grandchildren, I…
Plop.
And suddenly, I was back in the real world. My iPhone in the toilet, Revenge still playing, me in a total panic. Pants off, I raced to the closet, grabbed some rubber gloves and fished my iPhone out of the toilet. It was still working. As if I were trying to revive a dying old man, I started to cry out, “Stay with me. God damn it, stay with me! Don’t die on me now, you son of a bitch! My upgrade isn’t until February!”
Then, like the final scene of Terminator 2 (which I just saw on Netflix—great movie) where Arnold gets dipped into a vat of molten steel and then gives the thumbs up, my iPhone shut down.
I headed to Radio Shack in Southampton. There was nothing they could do. I could either wait until February to get an upgrade and get a POS cellphone in the mean time, or I could buy an iPhone 5 for retail—nearly $1,000.
I got the POS cellphone, and what a POS it is. No Netflix, no Pandora, even my Ameritrade app isn’t supported on this “smart” phone, which is arguably the dumbest phone of them all. It does get radio, however. So now I’m back at the gym, switching between NPR and conservative radio while on the Stairmaster, counting the days until February.