I was reminded today of the infamous ‘mobile phone and the poop explosion’ incident of 2005.

On that fateful day I couldn’t find my mobile phone.  That is not at all unusual at for me, I misplace things all the time. What was strange was that after hours of searching in our very small first house, the phone remained elusive. I came to the only logical conclusion –  that it had been abducted by the same aliens that have taken everything else that I have ever lost and never found again.

That was until our toilet decided to have the mother of all blockages, and I began to wonder if some evil child of mine had deliberately sent my phone to Davy Jones’ Locker via the Porcelain Express.

Yes indeed. The toilet was blocked so bad that absolutely no water would flush, and no amount of plunging would unstop it. The family had to be evacuated (as is usual procedure for civil emergencies), and I spent the next day excavating the backyard in an attempt to find the drain pipe.

I employed the services of an elderly plumber, we shall call him ‘Drain-man’, who assured me there was no pipe in existence that couldn’t be unblocked with his ‘contraption’ – a modified high-pressure hose which worked its way up/or down blocked drain-pipes blasting (and therefore dislodging) every thing daring to stand in its way.

All seemed to be going according to plan, until the contraption met with a very solid immovable object which had lodged itself in the pipe, effectively halting a week’s worth of poo and paper.

Drain-man, realising that his reputation was now at stake, determined that no blockage would get the better of him. He proceeded to break a hole in the pipe’s wall, and with the contraption at full throttle at one end, attempted to dislodge the blockage with his bare-hands at the other. Very, bad (and very unhygienic) idea.

I never did see what caused the blockage as it was well and truly ‘flushed away’ in the deluge that followed.  What I did see (and I’m sure it was in slow-motion), was Drain-man coming face to face with his adversary in explosive fashion, quite literally. If ever there was a wrong time to be in a wrong place… it was where the Drainman was.

If only it was videoed, I’d be famous.

Have you ever had one of those precious moments in life when, although you know you shouldn’t, you laugh at another person’s expense, and it makes your day? This was one of those times. It was almost worth all the trouble.

Drainman, with his vast years of experience, said that blockage was consistent with the mobile-phone-flushed-down-the-toilet-by-a-toddler hypothesis. Before he went home to wash up, I asked him if he ever got sick. He replied… hardly ever.

And that is the story of the mobile phone and the poo explosion of ’05.

My firstborn son eventually confessed (over a decade later) to flushing my phone down the toilet.  Son, you still owe me a new phone and a several hundred dollar repair bill.

Fun Fact: According to one survey, 1 in 3 Kiwi smartphones will die from being dropped in the toilet.