my first blackberry

The problem was that I was pregnant.  (And if you don't think that's a problem, it's probably because you've never been pregnant.)  Or maybe the problem was that it was a statistics test.  Or maybe it was the fault of my husband's jeans. 

Or, most probably, it was the combination of all three.  If any of those factors had been missing, I'd never have dropped that Blackberry in the toilet. 

When Father Bird came up with his latest, greatest Family Communications Plan, it involved me carrying an electronic doohickey everywhere I went.  I was skeptical.  "You remember the last Blackberry I had?" How could he forget? 

Father Bird graduated from college a year before I did, got himself a real job not too far from the university, and hunkered down to wait for me to graduate.  During that time we....came to be expecting our first child.  ("Well, honey, you got yourself pregnant, did you?" my grandfather used to say.  I'm still wondering how he thought I did that.) 

Apparently, sitting at a desk and wondering what his child-carrying wife was up to was too much for Father Bird, so he bought me a pager-on-steriods with a hip holster and attached it to my waist. I had a good time with it, holding it under my desk in chemistry class and writing him about all the nothing that was going on all day on campus. (All these people are walking around wearing cloaks over their backpacks?  Is there some kind of new club on campus I haven't heard about?)  I felt just a tiny bit proud of myself, being so tech-forward, what with a pager and all.  No matter that I only really wrote one person. 

It seems, in retrospect, that it might have been a better idea to take the money we spent on a fancy pager, and spend it on some maternity jeans, because the next part of the story involves me wearing my husband's jeans for months on end.  Father Bird is...bigger than I am.  I was horrified the morning I discovered I fit into his jeans.  And then relieved, because my jeans weren't even pretending to fit anymore.  I turned up the cuffs, and away I went.  So there I was, toting my fancy expensive pager around on the back of my husband's saggy jeans.  

On top of the pregnancy, and the baggy jeans, I added the statistics class.  I...am at a loss to describe to you how difficult statistics was for me.  I'm humbled to admit that there was something at which I was a complete and total idiot.  But there it was.  And it stood between me and my degree.  The only way out was through.  So I took statistics, and studied into the night, crying and cold, practicing my statistics until dawn...

I held on to my statistics grade by just a hair the whole semester.  It came down to the last test.  I knew if I passed it I would pass the class and not have to...gasp...retake statistics.  If I failed...heaven forbid.  So I did what all conscientious college students do when they're presented with knowledge that could serve them well the rest of their lives.  I crammed.  When I walked in to take the final statistics test of the semester, my head was so full of exactly the kind of problems I knew I'd face that there was no room for anything else.  I was ready.  I could do it.  I sat down, took out my sharpened pencil, and poured my brain out on the paper. 

Half an hour later I reeled out of the testing room, barely missing the door frame.  I felt so...lightheaded, so empty.  Smoke rose from the burned ghost-town of my brain, and tumbleweed blew down the deserted street.  My head was stuffed with...feathers, with dust, with anything, but not with statistics.  And I really had to pee. 

In this impaired state my three circumstances came together.  I stood in the bathroom stall, a little song of mental and physical relief beginning to hum through my head, hiking up my big-ol pants over my...maternity backside.  One hike...two hikes..and plop.  The instant I heard it I knew what had happened.  Slowly I turned around and stared in disbelief and horror at that pretty black pager, in the bottom of a (used) public toilet.

My entire soul hollered at me, flush it and walk away. Just leave it here and feign ignorance.  And at the same time I knew I couldn't.  What if it could be fixed? What would I tell Father Bird?  Oh, why couldn't I have dropped it before I used the toilet?  As soon as I knew what I had to do the little song shrank and shriveled up and blew away.  I shrank and shriveled up inside my skin, swallowing a couple of times to make sure everything was staying where it was supposed to.  I closed my eyes.  Fast as lightning I shot my arm in there pulled the pager out, gave it a sharp shake, and flushed the toilet with my foot.  I grabbed handfuls of toilet paper and tried to get the nasty thing at least off my hand.  I opened the stall door, toilet paper strands flying, and made for the sink.  

The bathroom door opened, of course, at this point.  I was prepared to give whoever happened to walk in on me in this state a withering and superior look.  Awkward situations, I find, can almost always be salvaged by the right attitude.    The door swung wide, and my old boss stood there. 

What do you do, I ask, when an old boss finds you standing in the middle of the ladies' bathroom with wads of sodden toilet paper wrapped around a wet pager and water dripping down your elbows?  You must start to babble.  I knew this rule.  I complied.  The bathroom was really only large enough for the two of us, one of us talking, giggling insanely, dripping toilet water down her arms, the other wide-eyed in astonishment, to circle around each other warily and head in opposite directions.  I wildly tried to revive the poor Blackberry while she used the bathroom, and both of us tried very hard to pretend that the other one of us wasn't there.  I prayed very hard that I'd never see her again.  After that I saw her everywhere I went. 

The pager was finished.  Father Bird took it to work and took it apart the next day, but all it was good for now was a few laughs when he told the guys why it was dead. 

So it was with more than a little trepidation that I took my first handheld device since that time gingerly from its packaging.  What bizarre fate awaits this innocent gizmo?  I'll let you know when it happens.  This one, Father Bird assures me, is insured. 

Oh, and the class?  It cost me a fancy pager and eight years of radio silence, but I passed.

~MB~