Goodbye, Old Friend

Sunday was a good day.  I slept in, ate a delicious lunch, and had a nice two hour long coffee date with friends.  Like I said, it was a good day.  Until my iPhone slipped out of my pocket and plunged head first into the toilet. First my screensaver photo came up and then it went black.  Like any panicked person would do, I grabbed it within seconds, dried it off with a towel, and pushed the power button.  Nothing. So I ran to the kitchen, dumped a box of rice into a giant Ziplock back, and gingerly placed my phone inside. I pushed out all the air, zipped the bag, and proceeded to wait.  Paul and I went to run errands.  When we arrived at the grocery store I wen to consult my list, only to remember that I couldn't do that because my grocery list is on my phone.  When I returned I tried the power button again, to no avail. 

"It's fine," I told myself.  I'll just wait 24 hours, plug it into the charger, and it will be fine.  FINE!  So that's what I did.  Nevermind that when I googled "dropped iPhone in water" the first thing every page said, before telling me to put it in rice, was "DO NOT TRY TO POWER UP!"  I spent much of my evening reaching for my phone when I was bored, only to find that it wasn't beside me and to remember that it was in a bag of rice on the kitchen counter.  I went to set my alarm and realized that I couldn't do that, because my phone is my alarm, so I had to set my digital alarm clock.  When I woke up the next morning I wen to check the weather only to realize that I couldn't do that either, buecause I use my phone to do that.  So I had to power up my laptop so that I could figure out what to wear.  When I arrived at work I attempted to check my email, check, Facebook, check my blog reader, and check Twitter, all in the course of about 10 minutes. I have no idea how many times I wanted to consult Pinterest about something only to look down and see my iPod with the wheel rather than my beautiful iPhone. Later that afternoon I remembered that I have a doctor's appointment next week and I wanted to confirm the time and date, but that was on the calendar in my phone.  After work I went to the gym.  I was going do Week 3, Day 1 of Couch to 5K, but I couldn't because I use a Couch 2 5K App and I forgot to look up the workout before I left work.  You know what else was in that phone?  Every phone number for every person I ever call.  I think the worst part of all this is that I hate putting new contacts in a phone and I'll have to completely rebuild my phonebook.  First world problem, I know.  But still. 

I was still convinced that everything would be fine when I got home.  I had read stories of people who dropped their phone in a lake or who had their phone submerged for minutes, and their phones worked after a few days on rice!  Surely mine would too!  But when I got home, it didn't work.  And it's not working now.  And it will never work again.

Paul had my number activated on his old phone so at least I'm not phonelesss anymore.  I can make calls and send text messages.  And that's really all I can do. And I'm learning to be okay with that.  Maybe I needed to be unplugged for a little while and not be so dependent on a hunk of metal and glass. Because if dropping my phone in water has taught me anything, it's that I'm super-dependent on that phone.  That, and it's a terrible idea to store every important phone number, password, and appointment in your phone without writing them down anywhere.

This by no means means that I will not be going back to the iPhone.  I already have a plan in place.  I'm eligible for an upgrade on December 6.  Because of the circumstances surrounding my phones untimely demise, I can upgrade early.  But iPhone won't allow Verizon to do an early upgrade on their newest phone.  The iPhone 4 is only available in 8 gb and that won't cut it for me.  So as soon as iPhone 5 comes out I'll get the iPhone 4S.  And a Lifeproof case.  Because I never want to deal with all this ever again.

Am I overreacting here?  Would you feel this lost if you suddenly lost your phone? Do you think Apple should maybe rethink their rule about never covering water damage, no way, no how?