Marital Telepathy & Narrowly Averted Info-Crisis

Here’s an example of marital telepathy and a harrowing tale of a narrowly averted information crisis.

Yesterday, Xy was doing some work at her classroom, with a little help from our friend James. (It seems someone donated a million dollars of supplies to the schools at the beginning of the year and the administration waited until this week to give the boxes to the teachers, simultaneously demanding said boxes be unpacked and packing slips returned immediately, precipitating a nervous breakdown on the part of my wife — but I digress.) They were going to get some lunch at Hooters (blame James) and James wondered if they should pick up something for me. Xy replied that I was working on our basement, a dirty and messy job, so I probably didn’t have my CrackBerry on me. “At least I hope he has the good sense not to take his CrackBerry down there,” she said.

James called me anyway. He got my voicemail. But not because I’d had any good sense at all. Quite the opposite.

I was scrubbing the chainwall in our basement, with the CrackBerry clipped to my pants pocket. As I stood up, the CrackBerry came loose and fell — right into my bucket of dirty, soapy water. This happened at exactly (well, approximately) the moment that Xy was saying she hoped I didn’t have the CrackBerry with me.

The poor CrackBerry was totally immersed for about ten seconds, maybe less. It took me a few seconds just to realize what was going on and scoop it out of the water. It was freaking out, vibrating, the little alert light blinking frantically. I quickly put it out of its misery by removing the battery. Then I put it out in the sun for a while.

I was really worried. Not about losing the device itself, which is just over two years old and pretty beat up. It probably needs to be replaced anyway. No, I was worried about the data. I keep my calendar and address book on there, and it’s been months since I synced it up with my computer, because I misplaced the cable.

A couple hours later, I put the battery back in and the CrackBerry tried to boot but stalled out. I removed the battery again, found these helpful hints, and put the CrackBerry in a container with some rice overnight. That’s supposed to pull out the moisture.

Today, about twenty-four hours after the immersion, I replaced the battery and to my immense relief it booted up without incident.

Note to self: Buy a new cable ASAP and back that data up.

Update: As a result of this mishap, I didn’t get a text from Michael inviting us to join them at Oktoberfest until a day later — but because my phone’s clock was also a day behind, I didn’t realize that the message was dated. So Xy and I made our way to Deutches Haus, but there was no fest. Xy made me take this picture of her in front of the locked gate.