Your heart drops, shocked expressions on your face, and you mentally prepare because you’re looking fear straight in the face.

Then you dive in hand first, and when you come up for air, what you have in your soaking, disease ridden hand is… your phone

Yup, you did the ultimate no, no: you dropped your phone in the school toilet.

Whether you realize it or not, your phone goes through a lot throughout the day, from other people’s sweaty, germy hands, to sometimes dropping and cracking the screen. But everyone knows the worst of all possible phone fates is the toilet.

So if it’s too late for you, and the worst has happened, here’s what you need to know to survive:

First, YOU LIE.  There are two ways to go–you can go with the straight to lie (it takes skill to lie this well) and say that “My first cousin’s uncle’s wife’s father’s mother’s sister came over my house and asked to borrow my phone so she could call her long lost cousin, Juan, and the conversation got so deep that she walked outside and didn’t even realize that it was raining.”  

(This is just what happened to my phone, but my story is true of course). Or you can go with the small, not that skilled of a lie, “I accidentally knocked over my open water bottle on the table where my phone was.”

Second, Place the Phone in Rice. This is the biggest, most helpful advice you shall receive.  The rice is used to attract people who will fix your phone for you (thanks Skye and Catherisa). When my phone got wet (from the rain of course) everyone told me to place it in rice. Even my friend Wilhemena, who finds a new way to hurt her phone every single day, told me she put her phone in rice and it came out fine. I knew that if her phone survived, mine would too.

And finally, REMEMBER TO KEEP BREATHING.  Whether your phone survived and you are strutting around with a toilet phone, you got a new one, or your life is over and you’re without a phone, remember that life goes on and that you will be okay.

And if all else fails, blame it all on Juan.  He’s such a clumsy jerk.