I accidentally submerged my phone in a small tub of water Tuesday evening. Not in a toilet bowl or kitchen sink, my phone fell into a mosquito trap, which I have been in dire need of. Everyone knows that water and electronics don’t mix. Google says to shut down your device, if you can, remove the power source completely, and submerge the phone in rice to absorb every H2O molecule possible. I was in a rush. My rush, and subsequent patience by force, explain the following shortcuts.

Like any other elementary school student, I wicked away all the water I could see with my naked eye, powered on the device, watched the screen light up with the correct loading images, then remain static despite my harried finger swiping to and fro. Okay, time to graduate to Junior High School. There must have been water trapped inside of the phone! So I made long flailing motions to coerce water out from the speaker and headphone jack; the following is a reenactment:

Droplets eventually stopped squirting against my face, leaving only air and hope to be expected. Again I powered on the device and was met by a picture of my home screen, instead of an interactive operating system. Hello High School, time to put those complicated evaporation lessons to use! Here’s where my real genius shined through. Blow dryers are a bad idea, because extreme heat can damage circuits without any assistance from water; even low settings can singe more than the eye can see. What source of heat could I use, knowing well in advance that the upper temperature was safe for sensitive electronics? Well, you see, I have this 13-inch laptop that I love; it’s equipped with an i3 Core processor and made of plastic, making it light and fast enough for media production on the go. A mild drawback includes the whirring fan that erupts whenever Adobe Dreamweaver launches, and there I found the perfect heat vent, simultaneously proven hot enough to burn a lap without detrimentally affecting a motherboard. Adobe Dreamweaver, Lightroom, Premiere, and YouTube videos warmed the phone innards hot to the touch, just like I remember my Earth Science teacher called for. You can guess what happened next, nothing happened next, besides the sound of text message alerts.

There went my plans for the evening, and as luck would have it, the following day also. I’m pleased to report from my phone after another 24 hours in a zip lock bag full of dry rice. Two pluses from the experience: not having a phone sure helps make decisions that much easier, and provides great material about irresponsible behavior. The lesson is, when you need a dry phone, use patience first.