Water Your Cellphone

By Patrick Crawley

It was early May when Tyler arrived home after the last day of his junior year of high school. He quickly swung open the door and dumped his backpack onto the kitchen floor, as if it contained the weight of the entire school year. He then pulled his phone from out of his pocket and sprawled out on the couch, where he intended to stay for the entire summer. His plans were soon interrupted when he heard his mom call his name from upstairs. Tyler sighed and stood up, setting his phone down on the kitchen counter, before making his way upstairs. 

“Hey, how was your last final?” His mom asked while she painted the stair railing, something she had been wanting to do since they first moved into the house two years ago, but never got around to. 

“It was fine.” Tyler said calmly.

“Did you ace it?” 

“I don’t know my grade yet.” he answered, before adding “I feel like it went well” when he noticed his mom eying him skeptically. 

“Well, alright.” she said. “Does it feel good to be done for the summer?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Can you go load the dishwasher for me?”

Tyler sighed out a “yes” before walking back down the stairs and into the kitchen. 

The kitchen counter was littered with empty cereal bowls, stained glasses and dirty utensils from the morning’s breakfast. Tyler started with the large cereal bowl his father had eaten corn flakes out of that morning. He rinsed the bowl out under the faucet and placed it in the dishwasher. He then went to rinse off a spoon, but the water splattered off the spoon and got onto the floor, Tyler’s shirt and the counter. 

“Aw, crap.” Tyler said, dropping the spoon and grabbing a roll of paper towels. He ripped off a paper towel that he wiped the floor with, before throwing it away and deciding he should probably change his shirt, which now had a very large and very uncomfortable damp spot. Before going upstairs, he grabbed his phone to check for texts and noticed the screen had gotten wet when the water splashed off the spoon. He sighed and wiped the water off with the dry part of his shirt, figuring it did not matter since he was going to change his shirt anyway. He stuffed his phone in his pocket and went back upstairs.

After changing his shirt, Tyler jogged back downstairs, when his phone flew out of his pocket and clattered to the floor. He sighed and picked up his phone, inspecting it for damage. Luckily, it landed on its case, so the screen was not damaged. He stuck the device back in his pocket and finished his choors.

The next morning, Tyler woke up and immediately grabbed his phone off his dresser so he could see what time it was. The screen read “11:27”. Not a bad time to wake up for the first day of summer. He shifted his phone around in his hand, lifting it up and down. Something about it did not seem right to Tyler, but he could not figure out what. It just felt a little more awkward in his hand. He figured he must have damaged it when he dropped it the previous day. 

Since he had not done laundry in two weeks, Tyler changed into the clothes he had worn yesterday. He was not planning on leaving the house, so he figured it would not matter if his clothes were clean or not. His day consisted of eating breakfast, scrolling through his phone, eating lunch and scrolling through his phone some more until his mom came home from work and needed help bringing in the groceries. 

He peeled himself off the couch and crammed his phone into his pocket so he could make his way out to the car. But before he could even get out the front door, his phone fell out of his pocket again and clattered to the floor. Tyler paused and bent over to pick up his phone. He again inspected the phone for damage, curious as to why his phone had now fallen from his pocket two days in a row. Yesterday he just assumed it was because he had been going down the stairs too quickly but today he had just been walking to the door normally. Maybe he had put his phone in his pocket carelessly and it had not been entirely secure in his pocket. But he had felt his phone reach the bottom of his pocket, so that could not be it. Maybe it was his pockets that were the problem. Perhaps they were too small. But he had worn those shorts plenty of times before and had never had any problems. Could they have shrunk when he washed them last? Possibly, although they did not feel any tighter around his waist and they fit the same lengthwise. So why would just his pockets have shrunk? Something weird was going on, he just could not put his finger on it.

“Tyler!” His mom called. “Are you gonna help me or just look at your phone all day?”

After helping his mom with the groceries, Tyler stopped trying to figure out what had caused his phone to fall from his pocket until it happened a third time, when he was climbing the stairs so he could grab his phone charger that evening. Tyler again checked the phone for damage and while he was relieved to have found no cracks again, he was now very confused as to what was going on with his cellphone.

That night, Tyler had trouble falling asleep, as his mind was racing, trying to figure out why he kept dropping his phone. He tried telling himself it was just an odd coincidence that he had recently been dropping his phone so frequently, but that explanation was not good enough for him. He had owned the phone for years and could only remember a couple times where it had accidentally fallen from his pocket. Now it had happened three times in just two days.

Tyler did what he always did when he could not fall asleep and watched videos on his phone. He had a favorite position to lay in when he did this. He leaned his phone against his headboard and tucked his chin over his pillow so it rested on his mattress. Only tonight his phone was now touching his chin. He scooted back a little bit in bed, but now his feet hung over the edge, which was unusual. He did not like having his feet stuck out as it felt very uncomfortable to him so he scooted back forward, but he was once again too close to his phone screen and it touched his chin. Now he knew something was up, but what? He had dealt with issues with his phone before but those were technological issues. This time his problem was with the physical object itself. He knew he would have to look into this further.

The next day Tyler sat at his desk and observed his phone, spinning it around on his desk. He thought it almost looked like his phone had gotten bigger. But that was silly, phones cannot grow. So what was going on?

He replayed the events from the past couple days in his head, when he dropped his phone helping his mom with the groceries, when he dropped it going up the stairs and when he spilled water on it while doing the dishes. Suddenly an idea came to him. It was completely ridiculous and if he said it outloud to anyone he knew they would laugh at him. But at the same time, it was equally ridiculous for his phone to randomly start growing. So he had to test his theory.

He grabbed the water bottle that he kept on his dresser and returned to his desk. He turned around to make sure nobody else was upstairs and checked his window to be certain no one from outside would be able to see him. He knew it was silly to be making sure nobody was watching him, but the idea was so stupid that he felt he needed to be absolutely positive that no one would see him testing it out.

He twisted the cap off his water bottle and slowly, carefully, poured a little bit of water onto his phone screen. He stared at the miniature puddle that was now on his phone screen. He was not sure what it was that he expected to happen. Frankly, he felt a little dumb for ever thinking anything weird had been going on with his cellphone. But then he noticed the puddle was getting smaller. Tyler leaned closer to it so he could get a better look at what was happening to the puddle. The water was not going anywhere, it was almost like it was seeping into his phone. He checked his phone for any cracks or openings where water might have been passing through, but he found none. His cellphone was absorbing the water.

Tyler stood up and put his hands on his head. He could not believe his discovery. How was he of all people the first person in human history to discover this? But he figured nobody else had ever purposely poured water on their phone to see if it was porous. He stared at his phone on the desk. He could tell it was growing. It happened slowly, by fractions of a millimeter at a time, but it was growing. 

He was unsure if the events from the last couple days made more or less sense to him. On one hand, he now had an explanation for why his phone kept falling out of his pocket or why it felt bigger in bed. On the other hand, that explanation was totally insane and if he ever told anyone about his findings he assumed he would be laughed off the face of the earth. Nonetheless, he was rather excited about his discovery.

He had always wished for a bigger phone. His screen always felt too small to be playing games on and he always wished it was larger when he was trying to watch videos. Now his wish was coming true. All he needed to do was water his cellphone and he would have a larger phone.

Tyler spent the next few days slowly watering his phone anytime he felt like he could use a slightly larger screen. Was there something in a video he was watching that was too small and he was unable to make out? He just poured some water on his phone and after a few minutes his screen would be large enough for him to see everything. Did he die in a game he was playing? All he needed to do was splash a little water on his phone and his gaming experience would be significantly improved.

As his phone got bigger and bigger, Tyler began hiding it from his mom. What would she think about his phone suddenly becoming larger? He knew she would not believe him if he told her the truth. Would she think he stole someone else’s phone? That seemed more believable to him than what actually happened.

Eventually his phone stopped being able to fit in his pocket. This was fine during the summer because he could set his phone down on a desk or table when he was not using it, but what would he do once school started? Would he have to stick his phone in his backpack with all of his textbooks and binders? That did not seem very practical to him, as he worried that might scratch or damage his screen.

By July, his phone was the size of a small tablet. He had stopped watering it a week ago, but it just kept growing. He had given it so much water during the start of the summer, that even after a week since he last watered it, it was still getting even bigger and it showed no signs of stopping. It had already grown large enough that it was no longer convenient to carry around, but Tyler began to worry about how much bigger it would get. Would it eventually become larger than his backpack? Would he have to store it under his bed like a foosball table? What if it got even bigger than his house? Tyler had never heard of anyone else’s phone growing uncontrollably before so he had no idea what to expect. But he knew one thing, he had to stop his phone from growing. 

A plant stops growing when it dies. So Tyler knew what he had to do. He was going to have to kill his cellphone. But how would he even go about killing his cellphone? One can kill a plant by not watering it, but he had stopped watering his phone a week ago and it was still growing. He knew that sometimes plants can die from being watered too much, but he did not want to give his phone anymore water out of fear that it would only get bigger. So what was he to do? Tyler sat on his bed with his phone resting in his lap. He thought about smashing it into pieces but then he worried that the individual pieces themselves might continue to grow. So he tried to think of another way to make his phone die. He looked at his screen and noticed that his battery was at 78 percent. Then a realization came to him. 

A cellphone dies when its battery reaches zero. Once a person can no longer turn their phone on without charging it, the phone is considered “dead”. So Tyler quickly went into his device settings and turned his screen brightness all the way up. He opened dozens and dozens of tabs, each of them with a higher quality mobile game than the last. He played music from five different apps. 

An hour had passed and Tyler sat on his bed, boredly playing a dragon breeding game. He was tired and his eyes hurt from the brightness of his screen. The audio coming from his phone was an incoherent mess of songs and sounds from his many different tabs he had open. But suddenly it all stopped. His screen went black. Tyler sat up excitedly. Had he done it? Had he finally killed his cellphone? He tried to turn it back on to make sure. Nothing happened. He held down the power button until the dead battery icon finally came up. Tyler smiled and set his phone down.

He wondered what would happen next. Would his phone finally stop growing? Would all the water he poured into it leak out of it like a garden hose with a hole in it? Would it explode? He sat back and realized he would find out soon enough. He just needed to be patient.

It took a few hours, but eventually his cell phone shriveled up and shrank back down to its original size. Tyler felt relieved as he held his normal sized cell phone in his hand. It felt good to be able to hold it in one hand again. He appreciated his phone for the size that it was, realizing there was a reason phones were not made to be super gigantic. He heard the garage door open. His mom was home. He plugged his phone in and went downstairs to help his mom with the groceries.