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December 22, 2007 |
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Dog Was Fed
FOUND by Sarah Merianos
in Boston, Massachusettes
I found this letter lying outside a row of Brownstone apartments in the Mission Hill area of Boston. Looks like Jackie really messed up this time.
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CONFIDENTIAL!!! August 02, 2008 |
The Point + Purpose January 23, 2007 |
Identity Crisis August 13, 2006 |
Life List December 28, 2008 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
I hate to tell you this, Jackie, but the upstairs toilet, the shower, the sink - in fact, all the outlets in the house - connect to the same sewer line. Once your cell made it past the trap in the toilet, it was pretty much irrevocably on its way to Deer Island.
I once dropped my CrackBerry in the terl. Here's what you do to remedy the situation: 1)use Purell to get germs off (The alcohol in that stuff helps dry it out.) 2) Put it in the oven at 150-degrees for about 47 minutes. 3) Put it in a bag of rice overnight in the fridge. 4) Pray. In my case it worked.
This is a nice find. I hope the kid got his cell phone back in working order.
no oven needed - just remove the battery and let it dry out for about 3 days. pray/hope/wish and then reconnect it all.
presto...all better.
What did you do with the rice?
If the phone has plugged up the toilet, then it may still be there. First try to fish it out with your hand (or your hand and a small tool), in case it hasn't gone completely around the first bend. If that doesn't work then, depending on how important the phone was to you, you can try to force it down with a plunger or flexible cable, in which case the drain is now clear but the phone is history. If this works, then I recommend lying about where you lost your phone. If it really is stuck in an unreachable section of the trap (happens all the time with kids' toys and stuff), then you need to remove the toilet from the floor, remove the obstruction, prepare the floor, clean the bottom of the toilet, replace the wax seal, and reinstall the toilet. Figure $150 if the bolts aren't rusted and floor is in reasonably good shape. Hey, it's a living!
What a coincidence. My daughter dropped her cell phone in the toilet a few days ago. Must be a common problem.
I forgot the cordless phone was in my back pocket and flushed it. My son-in-law took the turl apart but the phone was wedged in so tight that when he tried to nudge it the whole porcelain throne cracked. Had to buy a new toilet and a new phone...and had to listen to the kids making fun of me for the longest time. Good luck Jackie!
The ampersand (&) derives from the Latin "et," meaning "and." It should look something like an "E" and not a "3." I heard a speaker on the radio today say "ec cetera" instead of "et cetera" ("and other things" or "and so forth"). When I see its abbreviation written as "ect," I always think of electro-convulsive therapy. What else? "I.e." is an abbreviation of "id est," "that is." "E.g. is an abbreviation of "exempli gratia," "for example." If we remember these Latin origins, we're less likely to misuse them.
Why didn't Jackie say, "I fed the dog"? Her use of the passive voice in that sole instance is noteworthy and perhaps telling. Hopefully, feeding the dog and flushing the phone were unrelated.
At first I misread "dog was fed" as either "dog wasted" or "dog washed" and spent a minute trying to figure out what it was before I realized it was neither. I wonder what "dog wasted" would have implied...
i bet that was an embarrassing letter to write. LOL
Well I can think of some other people's phones I'd like to flush down the nearest facility...Am I the only person who is irked when someone calls *you* on your landline, then *they* get a call on their cell--and want to hang up on you? I mean, they called you!
Jackie's phone was in a breast pocket, or a hand, she came home in the middle of the night REALLY drunk and dropped it in while she was on the big porcelain telephone to God.
Picky Wicker -- well, we know what Jackie meant. Language evolves, no? That said (quo dicto), I completely agree with you about ignorant misuse of Latinisms -- it impoverishes the language, like every other ignorant misuse. (But how do you stop AutoCorrect from thinking 'i.e.' should be spelt [or spelled] with a capital I ??)
And perhaps she wrote 'the dog was fed' because it wasn't Jackie who did the feeding but some other person of no concern to A & L. Duh.
Or pehaps she was thinking in Latin -- 'cibo cane dato' (food having been given to the dog -- hope I've got that right -- ablative absolute, y'know. What a lovely economical language Latin is. Shame it's not taught any more.
CAVE CANEM!
Jonathan, you're missing a bracket.
I agree with Picky. It bothers me that her ampersands are backwards. Good luck with the phone though.
Wow, I heard that cell phone dropping story in the john three times this week. You know that was embarassing to write.
I've never dropped my cell in the toilet but I just recently dropped it in my roadie. I figured the vodka just sterilized it. My husband dropped his cell in the in the lake twice.
My friend Annie dropped her pot in a toilet once and it was the auto-flush kind and before she knew what happened the her precious package was swirling down the sewer system.
Only five shopping days till Kat's B-day!
I dropped my phone in the toilet a few months ago, at a bar. I wasn't so far gone I flushed, though!
Lucky they had more than one john in the house - there's nothing more annoying than some DIYer making three trips to the big box store while you cross your legs!
One of my friends thought her goldfish had died, so flushed it down the toilet, only to find it swimming around the bowl a day later. Whenever they tried to catch it, it swam back into the u-bend, so the whole family used their other toilet and the goldfish lived in the toilet for the remainder of its life.
I favor the flushing of all cell phones. Nobody needs that kind of constant connection.
That's what you call a dropped call.
A friend of mine was in central Africa for the Peace Corps, and she had brought her cell along just in case there was reception in her rural area. Turns out there was, and she was so pleased... except when she dropped the phone into the pit latrine. Yes, she did go in after it and yes it still worked... but she was sure glad she had had those travel vaccinations!
I don't understand how you do that, unless you realize the cell is gone and guess it got flushed. Because if you see it in there, don't you have time to get it out b4 it is flushed?
Becky - WOW.
Farmer - hear hear!!! Except maybe if you have teenagers or are an explorer. I would HATE to own one.
If I ever have a plumbing problem, I'm asking you guys!
do do doooo........"we're sorry. The person you are trying to reach is regretting buying the super duper tiny phone now. Please make a note to make fun of her later. Thank you."
What if Jackie hadn't left a note at all, and the toilet had just started ringing? :)
I read the note quickly and thought it said 'I flushed my ALL down the toilet' (instead of 'cell') hahaha
hahaha! i just did that last night, which definitely didnt help my already rough night. i got it out and am waiting for it to dry. i feel so much better about myself now though!
cant read--i thought the exact same thing when i first read it.
i'm glad i'm not alone in these things. :}
The rice is supposed to suck up any excess moisture, so you can leave it in a bag of rice overnight just for extra assurance. (Throw away the rice, rather than serving it for dinner, because that would be gross.)
The oven was necessary because I was having a friggin' brain aneurysm thinking I ruined the thing, and I just couldn't wait to see if the thing would dry out naturally. The oven worked great; just make sure to keep it on low, so as not to melt the plastic off the thing.
I used to be so low tech, but now I can't live without my Crackberry. It's terrible
I hope that Jackie left a second note in the downstairs bathroom in case the one on the front door got lost....
...and hooray for dads who can fix toilets!
Haha, I thought it said "I dropped my all" down the toilet.
Eew, wouldn't wanna go in after him!
*her*
(I guess)
If anyone's interested, I have a great recipe for e. coli and rice.
There sure seems to be a LOT on the reverse of this note, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to make my eyes bleed for The Cause today. All I can get without much effort is that it's directions to somewhere.. take I 93 S towards [somewhere].. right on 95... then I 93 (maybe 98) North, something something.
When did everyone start calling it a terl? Where did that term come from?
The terlet. For those that don't like the "oy" sound. That's how Archie Bunker would say it. It goes way back.
To actually flush it down accidentally would take some work. [Heard of a lot of people dropping theirs, but never flushing.]
My guess is Jackie had an old-school Nokia that just wouldn't die, no matter how many times she dropped it, froze it, set it on fire, covered it in salsa, etc. And she really wanted a new phone. Unfortunately for her, she didn't realize she forgot to write down all her numbers until it had disappeared into the porcelain tunnel.
BECKY: Now that's the *ultimate* recycling and kind-to-animals story; recycling your smallest room as a goldfish bowl. "Installation art?" Somebody call the Tate Modern! You may be up for the Booker Prize!
I am delighted with the mental picture of someone sprinkling goldfish food into the loo twice a day.
Our plumbing can't handle tampons, I can't imagine what a cell phone would do.
Well thanks for that comment Terrie.
LOL Night in Gale. Toilet bowl soup w/rice!
And fish!
Becky that's funny! I can just see the perplexed look on their guests faces when they hear the reason why they can't use the bathroom. Priceless!
And kudos to your friend... most people would have kept flushing.
Becky, your friends are cool. It would be funny if they'd added some artificial plants and maybe a treasure chest too. I would try that, but the water here is so chlorinated it would kill a fish in one minute.
Well, who among us can say they haven't flushed their cell phone down the toilet before?
I kept mistaking her "and" sign [not much of an ampersand] for a capital B. And I was reading it going, "wtf is B?" Then I figured it out..
This note seems a little awkward.
"the dog has been fed.
flushed my phone down the toilet.
will pay for plumber."
Oh yes, it's a haiku.
I was getting ready to go out and had sat my phone on the counter, when it rang I reached for it and accidently knocked it off, of course it fell into the toilet and of course the last person who used it hadn't flushed. So I thought that if I flushed it that everything 'yucky' would go down and the phone would stay in the bowl and I could get it out of the cleaner water... I wonder who was calling me... Maybe Myrtle can get it for me?
You're funny!
i once flushed my wallet in the bathroom at the mall...i grabbed t as it swirled. the teenagers in there thought i was crazy. i wasn't going to lose all that stuff!!!!!!!
CuriousKat, your friend's better off. Particulates are bad for the lungs.
Hey Jackie! Why you B poking around our bathroom when all U spozed to do is feed the dog?? What's up with dat? Keep your nose out the medicine cabinet, girl! Then you won't send your cell phone for a swim.
A few days ago, I was peeing and talking on the phone (dumb idea, but Alex wouldn't shut up). The phone call and the pee ended. As I hung up, I lost control of the phone. It bounced off the lid, hung in the air and...fell into the garbage can. Phones in garbage is not great. But better than the terl.
I wonder who would answer if we called Jackie's phone? Somebody post the phone number. I'll bet a million pet gold fish will pick up.
I guess if the phone got flushed it hit post-pee or post-poo water. Yuck. Jackie, were you talking and defecating? That's the problem, right there.
I dropped my phone in Lake Erie once. My friend rescued it for me and I took the battery out and let it dry for quite a while but after that it was still all messed up so i tossed it onto my bag but I missed and hit the wall. I looked at it right after it hit the wall and everything was fine. I guess it's a good thing I have bad aim.
Duh! If Jackie don't put her cell phone up her ass she probably wouldn't have flushed it down the toilet.