Cell phone after the battery started on fire while it was sitting on a desk in the house.
Why do bad things happen to good people? Have you ever asked that question? Have you ever heard someone else ask that question? Maybe the answer is, to stop worse things from happening.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day, happy Mother’s Day to everyone by the way, after supper we decided to take not our dog for a walk. It was a beautiful evening. The day had been warm and sunny and we spent it working in the garden. We went to a nice flat, paved trail where Tas could run a little bit in the woods and we could stroll. When we first pulled in I noticed they had put a porta potty there and we made a joke about it. Before we left I made the fateful decision to use said porta potty. I forgot I had my phone in my pocket. Years ago I worked IT for a doctor’s office and more than once we had to replace a phone because a doc had lost his into the toilet. Often I wondered how in the world that could happen. I found out.
Bill had given me the head lamp which I was holding when I went in, I heard the thud/plop of my phone hitting the unthinkable seething mass. I turned the light and glimpsed the corner of my phone sinking into the horror, right before the light went out. Fumbling and swearing I could not get the light to go back on. After several frantic moments the light flickered on then off again. More fumbling. More swearing. Finally it came on and stayed on. I thought about telling Bill I need a new phone because a bear ate mine. Then I did the unthinkable and retrieved my phone. After some serious wiping I finally came out of the porta potty, told Bill he needed to drive because I would be cutting my hands off, got in the car and told him the truth. We got home and after a good long cleanup of me and the phone we thought neither of us was worse for the wear.
This morning when I went to get my phone to take pics for the website I discovered that during the night my phone had willed itself to die and really who can blame it. I suggested to Bill that we could just put my sim in Sam’s old phone. We had the same phones and he bought a new one might as well reset it and reuse it! Bill fished it out of a drawer in his office and proceeded to do the reset. He brought it out to me and said, “I think you might need a new phone anyway because the battery in this one is swelling.” He ordered the new phone and I figured I’ll just use this one till the new one gets here.
I was setting it up and I could hear it, HEAR IT! It was not sitting flat because the battery had swelled up, this was really noticeable after the case came off. Bill only took the case off because he was gong to put my case on. He had not noticed the crackling noises when he was working on it in his office but they were very clear once the case came off. I had almost told him to leave Sam’s case on. The phone is now sitting in a metal bucket just in case it explodes. This would be the second cell phone in the last couple of years to have this exact same problem. These batteries are bad.
While I was upset at myself for dropping my cell phone and I was upset that we needed Sam’s info for me to be able to use his old phone and we don’t have access to that info, I’m now glad. If all of that had not happened that cell phone would still be sitting in a desk drawer in Bill’s office. How bad could that have been?
Maybe the reason bad things happen sometimes is to keep worse things from happening. Blessings in disguise. Maybe I need to rephrase my question from why did that happen to what did that just save me from? Consider this a PSA if you have any old batteries or devices with lithium batteries just laying around do something with them. At the very least check them to make sure they are not swelling. I used to think this was something that happened to other people or that it was a rare event but we have had it happen twice now with two different cell phones in as many years. Go check. Let’s all be safe out there.
UPDATE: Phone oops happened on Sunday, Monday the phone died and we discovered the battery had swollen up, Tuesday the smoke detector in Bill’s office died. Had this gone undetected until something actually happened the smoke would have had to have made it into the hallway before we would have known we even had a problem. To make this even more fun for the first time in 17 years Bill and I had taken a trip together. We were gone for 6 days things could have been very spicy.
