Look, it held on for a good two years of bumps, bangs, falls into tiles, grubby little people‘s fingers, spilled tea, and even a bit of Bovril that someone had so kindly spilled and camouflaged on the granite countertop. It even hung on as the glass protector cracked, and chipped away and then the screen started to chip away, too. It’s a good thing not many people phone thanks to the invention of instant messaging because if they did, there was always a chance of getting glass pieces in my ear. Yes, it was that bad.

I’ve had a few phones I had to leave in rice overnight for leaked water bottles or similar things. I even had a joke about who fixed the phone while it lay in the rice all that time, but I was reprimanded about it not being PC and I won’t repeat it.

When I worked in South Korea, I ate rice every day at school. Kimchi, too, of which there are thousands of varieties. In my second year in the land of Samsung, I decided to get with the programme. Everyone has a smartphone! So, in 2013 I got one, too. A Galaxy S2 with a dark purple cover.

It was a whole new world, especially discovering the phenomenal camera (it was cutting edge at the time). We could travel just with a smartphone and still get amazing pictures of everything along the way! Who knew? So convenient. It seems so archaic a decade later. Now, you can probably just blink and your TokTik robot will automatically bedazzle it, turn it into a video, and post it for three million perfect strangers to put thumbs on.

My dying phone could do everything I needed it to, especially capture my babies’ funny faces, milestones, and everything else. Since my camera still worked and I didn’t have much free time on my hands, I held on. I also don’t like to waste good money on expensive things when it’s my fault they need replacing. It’s not even close to my birthday. So, I eked out every bit of battery life until the end and kept taking those pictures and videos of my sweet boys.

Now, though, it is dead. Properly dead. It won’t switch on at all. It looks like a dog’s breakfast. How lucky that Mom and Dad have a spare one I could use until I get my act together. I can keep taking pictures. I can keep writing silly stories with just my thumb.

Published here.