I Put My Phone in the Washing Machine.

The day was calm just like any other. The birds chirped, the sun was shining in the sky and my dining hall pasta was lukewarm. Then I realized I didn’t have any socks left to wear, so I pondered to myself, “should I do laundry?”.

If future me had only been there to warn past me of what treacherous danger lie ahead.

I grabbed my clothes and started piling them in my basket. I brought my phone to the laundry room so I could maybe answer a few emails if I had to wait. BUT, my plan hit a snag. I could not carry my phone and the large laundry basket! So I did what any normal person would do, I put it on top of the load. 

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When I reached the laundry room I swiftly placed my laundry in a machine and hit start. It was then, yes, right then, that I subconsciously realized what I had done. I walked back up the stairs with a sort of disconnected panicked feeling. As I hit the threshold of my room I started searching for my phone. My brain was trying to protect me from this heinous act of murder I had just committed. Then it hit me, I dropped everything I was holding and ran downstairs in a desperate panic-tornado for the life of my phone… but it was too late.

Unfortunately, college washing machines have this really fun feature that locks the machine while it runs. I knew this, but it did not stop me from aggressively trying to pull the washer open. I did this for about two minutes and also pressed all the buttons on the machine at least twice. All of my calm collected smart tactics were somehow not working so I enlisted the help of an R.A. This was our exchange…

Me: Hey so I might’ve uh… like.. well…okay so uughgh… how does one unlock a washing machine?

R.A.: Oh you can’t really do that, why? 

Me: So my phone is in one right now-

R.A.: Oh yeah…so all the people before who’ve done that just like have to let it run

After this conversation, she did try contacting a bunch of people, but the ultimate answer was that I just had to let it run through the cycle. Now, all that chaos only took four minutes. So then all I had left to do was sit and listen to my phone bang around in the washing machine for another thirty-one. During this time, I looked up hundreds of articles on how to mend a phone after its been in the washing machine. Most of them said my phone was dead forever, but I liked the denial better. 

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My afternoon somehow progressed even worse because it involved explaining to five different Apple employee’s what I did to my phone. By the fifth tech person, it started to be funny, but also still made me wanna cry a lil bit. So the moral of the story kids is don’t, under any circumstances, put your phone in the washing machine. 

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