18 Things I Couldn't Do While My Phone Was in a Box of Rice

This afternoon at approximately 1:15pm, I dropped my cell phone into a toilet. The toilet was clean, as far as I know, though it was in a public place - a restaurant in Dupont Circle - so perhaps "clean" is debatable. The back pocket of my favorite black pants is just a bit too shallow, it seems, & when the phone hit the water, it made an unmistakable plunkkk sound that sent me into a frenzy of retrieving, drying, panicking, & running to the nearest CVS to purchase a box full of Minute rice.

Yes, there's something ironic about having to keep your phone in a box of Minute rice for 24 hours.

As someone who is perpetually tethered to my technology, going half a day without a phone was, well, different - sort of in a good way & sort of not at all. I'm thrilled to report that after only eight hours in Minute rice, my phone is working just fine (in fact, miraculously, it never actually stopped working), but those eight hours - combined with the fact that my phone died on a very long bus ride home yesterday - were enough of a flashback to 1998 to tide me over for awhile.

Here are 18 things I couldn't do while my phone was in a box of rice.

1. Google what to do when you've dropped your phone into a toilet
2. Check the time
3. Tweet the photo of the guy I saw on the bus wearing jeans screen-printed with Tupac's face
4. (Re)read Divergent on my Kindle app while riding the bus. Instead, I looked over the shoulder of the guy sitting in front of me, who was reading some ridiculous science fiction novel.
5. Look up the weekend weather in Las Vegas so I can pack appropriately for my upcoming trip
6. Excitedly text with travel buddies about our upcoming trip to Las Vegas
7. Pay for a soy latte using my Starbucks card, which is app-based. I didn't bring my wallet (it's a block from my office, & I usually just bring my phone), so I had to ask my friend Sean to spot me a croissant.
8. Check my work email, which meant I had to send an embarrassing email to coworkers admitting my phone-in-the-toilet fiasco
9. Work! I usually check social media throughout the day, but I had to ask a coworker to do it while I was between computers.
10. Read the news while in the bathroom (don't pretend like you don't do it)
11. Participate in absolutely vital photo projects on Instagram (I kid, I kid, though there were certainly a few things I would've photographed.)
12. Check on whether a transfer I made between bank accounts went through
13. Figure out when the next bus is coming. Just gotta wait & see!
14. Hail (& pay for) a ride home using the Uber app
15. Jam out to Aloe Blacc's "The Man" on Spotify while walking home
16. Kill time on Twitter while awkwardly waiting for my apatment complex's slow-to-arrive elevator with a stranger
17. Call my mother 
18. Set an alarm clock for tomorrow morning

Luckily for me (& thanks, in part, to my bulky protective Spigen case), my phone seems to be in fighting shape, & I'm thrilled to return to 2014. It made me think, though: Would it kill me to power down every now & then?

...probably.