Journaling About My Phone

What follows is a journal entry I thought worth sharing in my blog. If you're a listenter of the Extra Lean podcast, this is the post I was debating about sharing in "Extra Lean 68 - Why Bother Holding Back at This Point?". Also, this post has swears. In my journal, I curse like a sailor wanting to do standup.


"Phone"

Being a parent is amazing on many levels. One level that’s teaching me something elusive, more than I’m able to grasp at the moment, is the experience of teaching my eldest daughter to wipe her butt well when she poops.

It’s about patience and practice. Also, it’s something I leave to my wife when I have the chance.

Tonight, Kate’s in bed fighting a cold. I am downstairs facilitating bed time.

Tonight clearly number 2 nature called and my daughter called me in to the bathroom to help with wiping. I mention that we’re going to have her practice a couple wipes. If she still wants help after that, no problem.

She did and she did.

Feeling a bit tired, I walk up as she shows me her butt, it all is what it is. A parental job to be done. I grab some TP from the roll and that’s when my phone slips out of my shirt pocket.

Bounces off my daughter’s ass and into the toilet.

Un. Fucking. Believable.

Phone in the toilet. It did not rest within clean waters.

That’s when time slowed down. I debated with myself if I should just flush to and say good bye or rescue the phone. I rescued the phone.

Then wiped my daughter’s ass.

She asked if I was mad - I said nope. She apologized and I said - totally not your fault sweetie. She seemed relieved.

Suddenly she needed to share the event with her mom.

I said go ahead as I needed a minute to dry and disinfect my phone.

When I got upstairs they were both laughing so hard they were in tears. I had a chuckle too. Quickly both said they felt bad and that they totally understand if I need to get a new phone.

Very sweet of them. We’ll see what happens. So far, my disinfected phone is working fine.


The journal entry is from the 10th of August, the phone that went for the unfortunate swim was an iPhone. A temporary Android Phone was involved in the aftermath. That's where I'll leave the tale for now.