Oh No! I Dropped My Cellphone in the Toilet!

Oops!

All of us at one time or another have dropped something into the toilet which should not have been there. There are worse things than your cellphone which could fall into the toilet but certainly the cellphone would present most of us with a torrid moment.

What To Do First

Possibly it is easier to talk about things not to do first. I think the foremost thought in my mind would be to make sure not to flush the toilet or let anyone else. Of course the real action will likely depend on what is or was in the toilet with which your cellphone is now keeping company.

Possibly a pair of surgical rubber gloves would be a good start. You can then proceed relatively easily and comfortably to dig around with your hands in hope of retrieving it somehow before it gets too far down into wherever things go when they disappear into the toilet.

If this succeeds only in getting parts of you wet and even more frustrated possibly the next thing is the old fashioned hooking device. I know that there is a commercial one which has a name, but I don’t remember it. What I use is a wire coat hanger which I pull into a straightish line leaving the hook intact. Then you can insert this into the toilet and the pipe and hope that when you feel it hit something you will be able to hook it and bring it back to the surface for retrieval with your still gloved hands.

Of course the real danger of this approach is that you can easily make contact only to force it further into the pipe and away from your anxious hands.

One other possibility that you will obviously consider is the plunger. Maybe you can get it to the surface with the plunger long enough to grab it with one of your gloved hands. Of course you may have to add water in order to get the plunger to work well enough and this not only feels fairly much like a kind of panic action it also can work against you by just letting the cellphone get further away.

Last Resort

If you are anything like me in a situation like this you will not find it very easy to be rational or have sensible thoughts. First, of course, is the embarrassment if you get found out. Second is the concern that your phone won’t survive under any circumstance. Third it may of course mean that you will succeed in not only messing up your cellphone but also blocking the toilet and make it unusable until some drastic action has taken place.

So, the last resort really is to swallow hard which will include swallowing your pride and phone the plumber. Not only will your family have a field day out of this episode, the plumber will have a very difficult time keeping a straight face as s/he proceeds to recapture it for you. Naturally you will want to force the plumber to sign an agreement with a confidentiality clause. But you already know that he is not going to do that no matter what the price or bait.

Conclusion

The first thing after reconnecting with this basic part of your anatomy you will have to discover whether it will still work. I am sure that some cellphones are waterproof, but I am sure mine would not be. Even if you are forced to replace it you will still have the nuisance of having to find a way to retrieve all the things that are on or in your phone without which you cannot live such as contacts, telephone numbers and private text messages.

Possibly the best thing is to find a way to attach your cellphone to your person in such a way that it cannot be separated except surgically.