Up the Creek Without a Smartphone

Story Submitted by Cathy:

David and I were out on our first date to a restaurant.  It had been a little while since the Droid Incredible smartphone came out, and I had one.  He asked to see it and I showed it to him. He played around with some of the apps and found a game that he liked a lot.

He stood up and said, "This is awesome.  I'm just going to run to the bathroom."

"Can I have my phone back?" I asked him, but he was already walking off with it.  I didn't think too much of it at the time.  We had spoken online for three weeks before meeting, and he seemed like a good guy.

He came back to the table after a while.  "Everything okay?" I asked, "Where's my phone?"

He mumbled something that sounded like, "Toilet."

My breath caught in my throat.  "My phone's in the toilet?"  He nodded.  I asked, "Did you fish it out?"

He shook his head.  "Uh... it's in the toilet," he repeated.

I stood up and made for the bathroom, myself.  He called after me, "How are you going to get it out?"  It was a unisex bathroom.  I opened the door, looked in the toilet, and saw my phone within, surrounded by toilet paper.  Not thinking twice, I reached in, grabbed it, put it on the sink, washed my hands for about a minute, dried the phone, and tried to turn it on.

It was busted, and so I brought it out of the bathroom to an incredulous David.  I said, "I think it's broken, so you probably want to get me a new one."

He stared at me and at the phone.  "How did you get it out?" he asked.

"I reached in and took it."

"Into the toilet?  Eww!" he said, pushing himself back from me as if my very breath was contaminated.

I said, "I wished my hands.  Look, I want you to pay for this."

He said, "Shit never comes off!  Eww!  Eww!"

Raising my voice, I asked, "Are you going to pay for this?"

He asked, "Will I have to touch it?"

"No.  I'll carry it to the store, but you have to come with me to pay for it."

"Fine."

We hurried to finish dinner and I led him to a wireless store, where he purchased me a new phone (it cost him about $100), good as his word.  He seemed in a hurry to get away from me after that, and he didn't touch me since I had pulled the phone out of the toilet.  He must have thought that I was tainted for life, since he never contacted me again.