My wife dropped her phone into the toilet.

The first question most people ask, after hearing about the accident, is “Was there anything else in the toilet at the time?” She has testified that an empty bowl welcomed the phone’s dive. Who am I to question? To be truthful, I don’t want to know the answer.

She fished the phone from the bowl, dried it with a towel, turned it on, and, seeing no apparent problem, phone operating normally, placed the phone back into her pocket and went about her business.

That’s the story I got. When it comes to cell phones in the commode, we employ a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

In fact, I probably would have never known about the incident had the phone continued to work. But, alas, poor iPhone, I knew you well. The next time she retrieved it from her pocket and turned it on, it blinked back at her a few times, asked a question in Mandarin and then went to sleep.

Forever.

After she confessed to drowning by toilet, I did what I often do in circumstances of technical failure. I asked my new Dad, Google.

My old Dad was Google before Google. I could call him any time of day or night with a technical question. “Dad, sorry to wake you, but when I the water heater is making a sound.” Dad always had a technical answer and loved to solve my problems.

My mechanical problems.

My emotional problems, my relationship problems, my physical ailments were all property of my Mother, who would have the phone handed to her when any or all of these subjects came up. For nuts and bolts solutions, it was always Dad.

My Dad’s been dead for two decades. For the past twenty years I’ve been on my own, mechanically, and still have all ten fingers. It’s surprising. In the ensuing twenty years, I’ve found that for most technically oriented questions, Google works just about as good as Dad.

Just about.

And so, I typed in “dropped iPhone in toilet” and was immediately led to dozens of discussion threads posted by people who had done the same thing. Most of them began with a completely unbelievable story, followed by an immediate explanation of how the bowl was clean and clear at the time.

All lies, of course.

The stories were answered by all sorts of solutions. Place it in the oven. Paint the audio input with white out. Stick the phone in a bag of rice for a couple of days.

I tried them all.

None of them worked.

Her phone, when it does come on, gives her emergency instructions in Mandarin, Japanese, Chicken Scratch… I don’t know which language. I am a product of West Virginia’s public school system.

Although the internet solutions I found on Google were mostly useless, I was amazed at the number provided. Everyone, it seems, has dropped a phone into the toilet.

It was the second time I’d asked my new Dad, Google, for an answer this past weekend. The first came when I put my old car into park in a shopping center parking lot. When I came back from the store, got in and started it up, the car would not go into gear.

Stuck in park.

After trying all my usual methods of pulling on the lever really hard, beating on the dashboard and cursing fluently, I got on my phone, the one that had avoided the toilet (so far) and googled.

My new Dad instructed me to insert a ball-point pen into a notch on the shifter guide, wiggle it back and forth and – like magic – I was in gear. Or, at least the car was.

Thanks, new Dad.

Once again, hundreds of people had the same problem with the same car (probably in the same parking lot – I didn’t really bother to read their stories).

The point is that the internet is now my source of information for getting out of a jam. Google has become my go to Dad. And just like the real thing before it, I have to trust whatever nonsense Google spits back at me (Rice? Really?)

In the meantime, take some advice from someone who has recently been through the phone in the toilet ordeal. Unless you really know, for a fact, that nothing was in the toilet bowl with the phone, and you place the phone in a bag of rice, it might be a good idea to not eat that rice.

Just sayin’.