Ok, so I flushed my work blackberry down the toilet. No joke. ACCIDENTALLY. It fell out of my back pocket. I was wondering why I didn’t notice the flash of lights and rainbows the millions of times I had flushed before. It really caught my eye. I thought, why have I never noticed such beauty in an otherwise unsanitary event. Then I realized. And still I thought: true poetry in motion.

It wouldn’t go down so I had to retrieve it (with plastic gloves, which I then threw out). The thing is water-logged and disgusting (not THAT disgusting in THAT way).

On that Monday (a week ago), I tried to avoid telling the IT person what happened. But she wanted me to return the damaged one so she could get me a new one under the warranty. So I told her there was an unfortunate submersion accident. She still insisted. I said, “I can’t send it to you because of the unsanitary nature of the submersion event such that in order to send it you I would have to ruined the device by sterilizing it”. Still she pressed — probably just to hear me say it out loud — so I had to say that I FLUSHED it. (Accidentally, of course.) “Ohhhh,” said Fraulein IT Gestapo, “flushing is excluded from the warranty coverage.” Whaaaaat? There is a specific waterboarding exclusion. Let me be as clear as possible, I have not and will not torture my blackberry. I asked disbelievingly if this were the first time she had ever heard of the flushing event and Frau Nazi said, “you’re the first to admit it.” I had to pay for the replacement. Oh, the indignities.

I heard from someone else that these events are called “drownings”.