A couple weeks ago, when I was baking late into the evening, I dropped my cell phone into chocolate frosting.  Of course, it was the speaker part of the phone that got fully enveloped in chocolatey goodness, too.  I spent a fair amount of time trying to clean it out, too.  First I tried to use a washcloth, but that didn’t get down into the speaker part.  So then I glanced around to make sure no one was looking, and I licked it.  (Because for a fleeting second, I thought for some reason that might work better than a washcloth.  I can’t explain my rationale.)  Then I dug around in the speaker crevice with a toothpick.  Finally satisfied that I had done a good job, I got back to my baking.

The next day, I tried to use my phone.

The person I was calling sounded far away, yet also on speaker phone at the same time.  Kind of like he was really, really tiny and stuck in the bottom of a Campbell’s Soup can, trying to yell up to me to GET HIM OUT OF HERE PLEASE.

So I told Joey that I thought my phone was broken.  He told me maybe I should quit dropping it in chocolate frosting (he has a point there, unfortunately).

I tried using my weird phone for the next two days, but by Saturday it was driving me batty.  I went to the Verizon store on Lovers and Douglas, where I fully intended for them to be all um, lady, you dropped your phone in chocolate frosting.  We can’t help idiots like you.  So I took our backup phone, just in case.

We keep backup phones around due to the amount of awful things I have done to my cell phones.  To summarize: I set one on fire, I ran one through the washing machine, and I dropped one in a very deep puddle in the parking lot at NorthPark in a rainstorm; some lady from Plano found it several hours later, and one seems to have gotten thrown out with a chicken carcass.  Now I can add dropping it in chocolate frosting to that illustrious and extensive list.

There I stood, in line with my frosting phone and my backup phone.  The store manager took a look at my broken phone and said “Yep, your speaker is broken.”

I did not volunteer the frosting information.  I saw no point.

After a few minutes, he told me I could either upgrade and extend my contract, or purchase a new phone.  I whipped out the spare and asked him to activate it, which he did for free.  Maybe he could tell the speaker was full of frosting and he felt sorry for me.  Then again, maybe not.

Ten minutes later, I walked out of the Verizon store with a fresh, frosting-free phone.

All this to say: I haven’t gotten used to the new phone’s ringtones yet.  I keep missing calls and texts, and that’s why.  So if I haven’t gotten back to you I don’t hate you, it’s just that I can’t figure out my new phone. And the keypad is really weird for texting, which causes me great sadness.

I have a feeling I will never be entrusted with an iPhone.