Stories of a Viking Matriarch

This is a true story.

You will read it and hope it's not true but it is.

It all started on Friday. Maybe it started on Thursday.

It all started on Thursday night. I couldn't find my cell phone charger for my cute little green Samsung. It was plain gone, not anywhere. Vaporized.

Back to Friday now. Friday I began my day with my usual -- lip gloss, hair in a bun, heels on feet, a quick check in the mirror, brief case over right shoulder, car keys in hand and kisses to the kids. I cloppity-clopped down the walk to the driveway with my dying cell phone in my bag, and except for keys my hands were empty. Lars hadn't made the coffee that morning, I was going to have to shell out some cash for my usual SBux that day. I hopped into Hope's little sports car, as per our usual car trading when she has more than one of my children at a time.

Work was anemic with a puny patient load that had me cutting out of the office early and a little cranky. Before I ran home, the next stop was Starbucks and Best Buy. Well, probably Best Buy and THEN Starbucks. It's not like you want to have an incident where you get some electronic equipment all frizzled out because your shakey hands dribbled coffee onto the Nokia display.

After getting a ridiculously priced replacement charger for my cutie pie phone, I headed to Starbucks. Because I'm a nice employer, I made sure to call Nanny Hopey first to get her order too. Hope advised me that she and most of the kids were at the beach, and could I please pack everyone a picnic lunch to have before I met up with them? Suddenly, it was my turn to place my order . . . oops, instead of ordering a half-caf, non-fat, tall vanilla latte I just ordered a non-fat, tall vanilla latte with all the caffeine that SB has to offer. Oh well, I needed a pick me up, or something like that.

I rushed home to throw a lunch together, tossed towels and swim suits into the beach bag and then zoomed off to get Annike from her gymnastics boot camp by noon. Made it to Annike in time, still sipping on my latte with my empty stomach. Felt a little jittery, but finally managed to parallel park at lifegaurd tower no. 30 -- only 2-towers away from Nanny Hope and the kids. I finished the latte just in time to feel all that caffeine settle into my bladder.

Annike and I bounced toward the beach with all our gear, including my brief case which held my now semi-charged phone that I had plugged in for a few moments while making lunch at home. Man, did I have to pee. After plopping our stuff onto the beach, I got my car keys from Hope and then schlepped over to my car with my briefcase among other things that didn't necessarily benefit from being on a sandy Pacific beach in the hot sun. On my way to my Bus, I passed a port-a-potty, it made me shiver but at least I fully understood what my options were. I dropped my briefcase into the car and grabbed my cell phone out of it. Then, on the way back down to the beach I decided that I would indeed absolutely need to rendez-vous at the port-a-potty.

Before stepping in to that blue little silo of depravity, I took a deep breath, held it, then burst into the stall.

And success.

Almost.

As I reached for my cell-phone, gingerly resting on the sloping lid of the toilet paper dispenser my body refused to forget that fully caffeinated latte I had poured into it that morning. My jittery and shakey left hand did not firmly close around my adorable, green celly. As I whirled around to step out of that azure tower of terror my fingers released . . .

and my cell phone went flying . . .

with a sickening 'kerplop' (lots of emphasis on 'plop') . . .

it landed into the juicy goo below.

Yes. It landed into the toilet.

In it.

OMG.

I stepped out of the port-a-potty. My heart racing. What to do?

Leave it. Just leave it.

Oh no! I just bought that charger! That expensive charger. And now, come to think of it, I remember the guy at the AT&T store telling me that if I ever break or damage another cell phone all I needed to do was bring it back in and they would replace it for me.

Talk about OMG. There were no other options. I went back in.

I stared down into the abyss, surveying the landscape. The toilet was filled with a blue solution that smelled like an elementary hallway just after the janitor cleaned up puke off the floor. I couldn't gauge depth, but I could definitely tell that my darling phone wasn't alone down there. It had plenty of company, if you know what I mean.

I cried a couple of tears. Then I transferred my bracelet to my right arm, mysteriously forgetting about my wedding ring on my ring finger. I rolled up my sleeve of my tres chere Banana Republic blue-and-white-striped oxford. Just to be safe I rolled it up to my underarm. And since deep breathing seems to be a habit of mine lately, I filled my lungs with putrid, rank, blue-goo, port-a-potty air.

I plunged my left arm into the center of the toilet. Objects burst away from my extremity from the force, only to bump back towards me, lightly tapping my forearm. I quickly tried to remember anything I learned from Mr Troost's AP physics class, recalling equations involving trajectory and points of initial impact. Bingo, search the left Kelly, stay to the left.

In the left corner of the hole, my finger tips found my cell-phone, fully submerged and resting at the bottom of the unit. I pulled it out, flicked off a bit of saturated toilet paper and then with the phone tightly in my fingers I ran from the port-a-potty as fast as my former track star legs could go. At that moment Hope turned to see me running toward her, but instead of stopping at our beach blanket I continued my sprint all the way to the chilly water. I plunged my left arm over and over again into the water. I dropped to my knees and with my right hand I grabbed fistsful of sand and scrubbed my left arm under the waves.

Hope's initial look of alarm turned into muted laughter, her mouth frozen in a wide-open lockjaw, eyes squeezed shut as she gasped for air. Apparently, other beach goers found me alarming -- my crazy run down the beach, my screaming, the vanilla latte pouring from my nostrils in my emetic coniption.

The kids were paralyzed, questioning looks on their faces. What the Hell is wrong with our mommy?

Finally, slowing my breathing down to a mere 50-breaths per minute, I walked back to our blanket. My hands white and shrunken from the water, I finally let go of the cell phone, chucking it into the sand angrily. I silently poured an entire bottle of hand sanitizer onto my arm, sniffing and feeling the pain of e. coli and listeria permeating through my skin. I relayed my tale to Hope, gesticulating wildly when half-way through my story I felt my wedding band fling off my finger and land onto the sand.

"Don't move," I screamed. "Nobody frickin' move."

The kids looked at me with horror in their eyes, our neighbors clicked their tongues at my monstrous language use. Hope, near hysterics with her legs crossed to keep her bladder from failing her, spotted a man 50-feet down the beach with a medal detector. She brought him over to our site and he set to finding my wedding ring.

We eventually found my wedding ring. The day eventually, mercifully ended.

When I got home, I tried again to sanitize my arm with rubbing alcohol and then Scrubbing Bubbles spray. When I felt quasi-reassured that I had killed every agent still living on my skin, I got into a scalding hot shower. After that, one final application of rubbing alcohol.

That evening we delivered my cell phone, sealed in a zippered sandwich baggie, to the AT&T store. It turns out the insurance plan does indeed cover port-a-potty incidents. Tomorrow, a third party will deliver my new phone. Niether cute, nor green but definitely de-shat and safe for human use.

Sadly, this is a true story. It will follow me always. It will never leave me. I am forever altered.

The moral of this story (it has nothing to do with Starbucks coffee or bringing one's cell phone into dirty environments): piss yourself, it's more convenient then a port-a-potty.