Water and phones and... well, just read it.

Jake here. One of my brothers posted [something like] this to our family email group:

Does anyone have an old cell phone? A young lady dropped [redacted]'s into some Gatorade today at the track meet. Sure we could ask them to replace it, but I figured it's pretty likely that _someone_ has a 3-5 year old phone they are not using. :)

Here's Sue's response:

Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe it's just a Verizon thing, but at any given time folks usually are eligible for free or $10 phone deals from their carrier (with the usual two-year-we-own-you contract or similar thing.) I mean, if my kids were to drop my phone in liquid they'd end up landing on your front lawn after I drop-kicked them, but then I would log in to the wireless folks and see a host of free phones ready and waiting. It's not the cost of replacing, see, it's the fact that Timmy has been TOLD over and OVER and OVER not to TOUCH the dog's water bowl, or the dog's food bowl, or to dump the latter into the former, or to try to carry every mug he finds to some adult who must want "Hot Tea!" or "Hot Coffee!" (I TOLD Jake it wasn't a cute idea to let Timmy have his own plastic mug of lukewarm tea because it would lead to just this sort of stupidity, but did Jake listen? Noooooooo....) or to consider any cup with any amount of liquid in it his personal chance for waterplay, so when of course he once again fails to heed all these Don't Dump, Touch, Dispense, Look At or Stand Near the Water rules while illegally holding my phone it is necessary that he show some remorse so I can mistake his displeasure with my displeasure as some hint that he might actually learn to stop creating puddles in my HOUSE and stop messing with my STUFF, when in fact he is neither truly remorseful or truly learning anything except that next time he needs to make the puddle bigger, faster, because Mom is clearly not happy with the small puddles. The cost of a new phone is not the major factor in my fury.