A Fatal Swim

My cell phone went for a dunk in the toilet. Fortunately, it was a clean toilet as I had just finished scrubbing it and was inserting a 'cling on' freshener. That made my lightning fast decision to rescue my drowning cell phone a lot easier. Still, I was too late and the damage had been done. See, this all started in May when we went to renew our service plan.

Here in Abilene there is no Verizon. We always use Verizon. We love Verizon. So we moped around, shopped around, and logically came to the decision that Alltel was the lesser of all the evils. So in we nievely went. Since we had finally achieved DEBT FREE status this year (Finally!) we decided to splurge and actually get nice phones. Up until this time we always got the cheap -buy one get one free- deals. We would come away maybe fifty bucks in the whole. Not this time. We perused the very limited options and picked the phones we liked. I wont lie, they were nice. Not iPhones or Blackberrys, but real nice. When the guy rang us up I about had a heart attack. He wanted how much? Right now? For two lousy phones and Alltel to bill us every month for 2 years? The oily cell phone salesperson kept trying to tell me how much the phones would cost AFTER the rebate. (The rebate we had to jump through hoops for and wait 2 months to get back...) No no no! How much to I have to pay you NOW before I can walk out the door with these two phones and your lousy calling plan?!? It was astronomical! I couldn't do it. Period. I could not give someone that much money for cell phones. Does anyone really pay attention to the price of those things!?! So Erik and I literally visited the store like 3 times before deciding and then made the oily sales guy really work for his money. We were there for several hours figuring this all out and trying to get freebies and extras :) Eventually, we did each get the phones we liked best. We, of course, wrangled some free things out of the deal, immediately did the rebate, and contributed some of our own spending money to help lessen the pain of paying a ridiculous sum for a stupid cell phone. {sigh} Riker won't be able to attend college, but hey, we were splurging, right.

So, this brings me be back around to the toilet. The one that swallowed my really expensive, pretty new cell phone. The one I paid way too much for. As I quickly rescued the cell phone and began CPR I new my worst nightmare had come true. I had just accidentally thrown many hundreds of dollars literally down the toilet. I turned it off, took it apart, and dried dried dried. I could hear a little hiss and sizzle begin somewhere in the inner workings of my stupidly expensive phone.... The interactive touch screen began to mist and fog over. I prayed fervently that God would forgive my greed and grant me a reprieve. No such luck. While my phone still lives, it is not in stable condition. Therefore, today I went to Alltel and paid another couple hundred dollars for a different 'cheaper' phone... This would be the EXACT same phone I should have gotten in the first place.