Thank God. The Apple God.

So, as many of you know, my 3 week old iPhone met a sad end yesterday when much to my chagrin, I realized that the contents of my water bottle fell out onto my iPhone while I was riding the train up to school. It was dead. Fried. I even consulted with my beloved operations tech geek Apple friend who advised me to turn on the a/c full blast and hope that it would dry out. I even dreamt that I would wake up and it would suddenly come back to life, just as I remembered it. Alas, it was not to be. Nothing. A black screen. My dream had become a real-life nightmare.

I was lost without it.

I woke up early this morning before school so I could make a trip to the Apple flagship store on 5^th ave and beg for a replacement. “You’re going to have to pay for it to be ‘serviced’ they said. $249. At least you save $150.” I was desperate. Why were they being so mean? Why did I have to shell out another $250+ change for a phone I JUST bought? I felt low. Forlorn. I walked across the park, watching the small snowflakes fall and headed uptown to a doctor’s appointment and then to class and felt the sun would never rise again.

But, mid-day, my luck was beginning to change. I made an appointment for 10:30pm at the SoHo store. I heard of a few people told me that they had managed to get free replacement ipods, even after “falling into a lake” or shattering the screen after they dropped it. I managed to get a big locker at the Columbia gym, even though it was the end of the semester. In my retail class, the Founder and CEO of Build-a-Bear Workshop came and gave me a Columbia outfitted bear, just because my birthday was coming up faster than anyone else in my room. You throw in a great final media class and a 1 train that miraculously arrived right when I got to the stop and decided to go semi-express, skipping every local stop except for Houston, just so I wouldn’t be late for my appointment at the Apple SoHo store.

I got there and a nice nice man looked at my phone. He said “that sucks” when I told him that some bully with a backpack knocked over my water bottle as they brushed past me in a classroom, flooding my iPhone. He looked at my sim card, saying he couldn’t see any damage. He said “Hmm. It just won’t turn on. I have no idea why. I can’t see any water damage. You didn’t tell me there was any water damage. I guess I’ll have to get you a new one.” And he walked away and came back with a brand new *free* iphone. Just for me.

Thank God. Or shall I say, thank the Apple God?

Of course, maybe there’s an end to such luck because I fell and almost cracked my head open on some black ice while walking home, with Columbia bear and iPhone in tow, safely tucked in my back pocket.