Last week, the worst possible thing happened to my cell phone. I was passing by my living room and there, on my white couch, was my adorable, new, hot-pink, RAZR cell phone sitting in a pile of cat-vomit.

I quickly ran over to the phone but when I got there I didn’t know quite what to do. Do I pick it up? Do I leave it there and make my husband deal with it when he gets home from work? There are definitely zero directions to be found on how to successfully clean off cat-vomit from a cell phone.

I finally decided to try and salvage my phone. After all, my sister had already been giving me grief for the past two weeks about my cute, little, RAZR phone and I couldn’t imagine having to tell her that I needed to pay for yet another new one. “I can’t believe you and Bill paid extra for your phones,” she kept saying. “Why wouldn’t you just get the free ones that come with the service?”

I grabbed the cell phone and threw it into the sink but not before little, chunky, bits fell on my sock. I turned off the phone, wiped off as much vomit as possible and then gave it a bath in an entire bottle of antibacterial gel. Finally, I crossed my fingers and hoped to hear my “Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang” ring-tone once again.

While I was waiting to find out if my cell phone was a goner, I found out some other interesting ways in which people have destroyed their cell phones. (Names have been changed to protect the embarrassed.)

“I was living in a high-rise on Marine Drive and I accidentally dropped my work cell-phone down the elevator shaft,” says Buffalo Grove resident, Bianca. “I didn’t really like having the phone but I never thought it would meet its untimely demise in such a horrible manner. When it was recovered by maintenance, of course it was in pieces! I was too embarrassed to tell my boss what happened, so I just said it had been lost.”

“I once had a former student baby-sit for my kids,” says an Arlington Heights teacher. “The sitter told my kids that it was time to go to sleep but my six-year-old son refused. He said, ‘You can’t make me.’ She said, ‘I’m in charge, not you.’ Then he grabbed her cell phone and flushed it down the toilet.”

“I don’t know how I managed to do this to my phone,” says BG resident Sam. “But before I got my I-Pass I dropped a coin while throwing change in the bin. I opened the door to get the coin and I didn’t realize my phone fell out of my coat pocket. I heard a little crunch as I drove away and that was the end of my phone.”

“My sister-in-law found her ruined cell phone in a bank of snow, under her mailbox.” Mary, BG resident.

“A ‘good friend of mine’ lost cell phone usage due to excessive drool when nothing else would pacify her baby. Her dog also used one of her phones as a chew-toy.” Wanda, Vernon Hills resident.

“I was having a great time swimming with my son for about 45 minutes. When I got out of the pool, I felt something in my swimsuit pocket. I pulled out my leather wallet, keys and cell phone. I took apart the phone and actually put it in the oven to dry it out. That didn’t make my wife very happy and it didn’t fix the phone.” Kevin, BG resident.

A local cell phone store employee named Bob said, “Once we had a window-washer come in who had gone to grab his phone and it fell down 62 floors to the ground. He brought in all of the pieces and wanted to know if we could fix it. I told him that there’s not much we can do if that happens.”

Bob also said there are many typical “summer” cell phone breakages. “Many phones are smashed to pieces by falling from roller coasters. People also run over their phones with lawn mowers.”

The most common way to ruin a cell phone? Having it accidentally fall in a toilet. This could be at home, a friend’s house or even in a public restroom. Some people let the phone dry out and if it still works they continue using it. Others can’t get over knowing where the cell phone has been and will opt to purchase a new one.

So, are you wondering what ever happened to my cell phone? Well, I guess the bottle of antibacterial gel dried because my cell phone started working again a few hours later. And for those of you that were thinking that I am heartless and should really be a little more concerned for my feline friend than my phone, my cat is totally fine, too.

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© 2006 Susan Dubin, Buffalo Grove, Illinois