It's happened to us all...

It's raining. 

I have no umbrella. which I do not mind. It's just a little wet. 

I'm in a maxi skirt and my giant raincoat, and trying to go to the bathroom. Somewhere in the shuffle on putting my backpack and water bottle down, and trying to lift my giant skirt, I hear a terrible, gut-wrenching...

 "PLOP"

"Oh no oh no oh no!" 

I fished the phone out of the toilet bowl in horror, while a girl washing her hands called through the stall, "...is everything alright?"

Rice. I need uncooked rice to absorb the water in the circuitry. this is not my first phone-in-water rodeo. 

To be clear, this is not a fact I'm proud of. 

The following sequence of events are all real, and happened with exponentially-growing panic:

• I rush to the small and overpriced corner store.The nearest grocery store is a 30 minute walk, and it's raining. it's as good as we're gonna get
•  ask the lady at the front desk, "Do you sell rice?"
• she looks at me like I'm speaking a different language, and responds with a blank stare. "Great. I'll check the back" I say
• scan the shelves: noodles, coconut flakes, rice flour. Useless. 
• finally see rice--but it's Garlic and Spanish Rice boxes. Gah! ...no other options here...
• quickly purchase a box--the garlic one. 
• rip top of box open, realize the flavoring is in a separate pouch. hooray!
•  shove phone in. 
• clearly there's not enough rice to submerge the stupid, toilet-drenched device. 
• run back to the shelf 
• purchase box #2 (this time, Spanish Rice)
• rip open top, pour box #2 into box #1
• spill rice all over the counter

At this point--everyone in the store is looking over, watching this crazy lady throwing rice around the check-out counter. But I'm too passionate about my purpose to be distracted or shamed by strangers who don't know my plight. But the box thing isn't working. I ask the front desk lady if she has a plastic bag of some sort. "trash bag...? anything?"

• she says, bored, "banana bag?" 
• excellent idea. 
• I rip a fruit bag off the stand 
• go to pour the rice in
• there's a hole. you've got to be kidding me
• Because it's raining, there's plastic bags out front to hold wet umbrellas
• I grab one of those. pour all the box's contents down the skinny plastic tube
• It's long and narrow, and I am having trouble moving my phone around in order to completely cover it with rice. 

The woman at the check-out counter watches me struggle, and finally says, "what are you trying to do...?" 

"My phone...is wet..." I say, looking up at her, deflated. 

• She holds up a finger: one second. 
• Comes back with an empty protein bar box. 
• Takes the contents of my umbrella bag and expertly places a layer of rice, the the phone, then sprinkles the rest of the rice on top. she must be my fairy godmother. 
• then she turned away, bored again, to help the next customer in line to check out. 

So now I have an open-faced box of Spanish rice-covered phone, and need to transport it without getting it wet. I cover it with the fruit bag--putting the hole on the bottom of the box. then stack the two rice boxes on top--hoping they'll catch most of the rain. I make it home phone in hand--

Time will tell if my efforts were for naught. 

Now I'm eating a cookie.