A rather unfortunate yet hilarious thing happened to me yesterday evening. It was a typical Monday night; I was walking from work to the TRAX station at Gallivan plaza to take the light rail home. I have gotten into the habit of calling people after work to make the half-hour wait/ride/walk a little less painful, and was this time chatting with an old buddy from college. It just happened that I was a few minutes late for the 6:21 train and saw it approach the station as I turned the corner. Figuring I had missed it, I kept strolling along to the station. When I got closer the train wasn’t moving yet, so I jogged over to try and jump on before it took off.

Mind you, I’m still a gimp, and had one arm snugly tucked in a sling beneath my coat while the other held my phone. As I’ve done many times before, I went to cradle the phone with my (good) shoulder while I pushed the button on the train to open the door. This time, though, I was a bit hasty; my phone careened off my shoulder, bounced off the curb of the train platform, and skidded to a rest directly beneath the train’s wheel. Wtf? I thought, peering down at my still open phone lying benignly on the rail. A dude about my age happened to be standing there laughing, “Oh man you couldn’t have dropped that in a worse place! Don’t reach under there bro!” This was immediately after considering reaching under there quickly and nabbing it, or at least moving it from the rail. Then I pictured the train taking off with my arm attached and thought better of it. “Get a stick or something, dude!” Already I was chuckling at the sheer absurdity of the situation, but decided that the only safe option was to try and hold up the train. So I took off in a sprint towards the front of the train to try and wave the conductor down. Of course, right when I approached the cab the thousand-ton electronics compactor begin to move, barreling down the street leaving a trail of dust and transistors.

Immediately I knew my phone was toast and pictured in my mind the mangled piece of silicon and plastic I had recently been using to have a pleasant conversation. I walked back sheepishly to where the dude had been watching the whole debacle and saw him standing there holding it.

“I used to work at a cell phone retail store, and there’s no fixing that!” he managed to get out in between fits of laughter. I accepted my $250 communications device-turned-paperweight with a chuckle.

“Yyyeaaa,” I agreed without inflection.

“Hahaha, sorry man it’s not that funny!”

“Actually, it’s pretty funny,” I remarked frankly before turning around to catch a train going the other direction to the nearest Verizon store.

Luckily, my old phone is still intact and seems to work fine. The only issues were the battery, which I replaced today, and some missing contacts, which were re-synced using Verizon’s excellent Backup Assistant program.

Like all my deceased personal electronics, the freak show of a phone has made its way to the wall of my bedroom. Oh well.