It started off as a great evening. One of the best of the year because it was the night of Life In Color in East Lansing. Everyone was feeling good, positive vibes were in the air, and the night was still young.

My excited, white t-shirt wearing group of friends and I eagerly called a cab to take us to the venue downtown. The music playing during our ride there charged us up, so naturally we're super hyped at this point. Like I said, the nights bringing good vibes, and good vibes only.

After about 15 minutes the cab stopped, and ten rowdy college students sprinted out and raced to the entrance, some eager to dance, others eager to pee then, of course, dance. Well, it was my first time at this little taste of heaven called Life In Color, and I was unaware that good old fashioned porta-potty’s would be the only restroom they’d allow us paint covered kids to use. But a little tipsy and with a full bladder, you bet I was going to suck it up and go so I could continue being another flailing object in the crowd.

Well… wise little me saw that the porta-pottys had no lighting and I was not going to risk touching something unspeakable…ha. So I turned the flashlight on my phone on and set it on, what looked like, a stable platform about eye level. Once finished, I was ready to walk out, and I have to say, I must have really done something awful to have been hit with this karma because all the sudden I heard a loud plop of something falling into the most foul hole I could ever imagine. Right then, the porta-potty went black.

I tried to put every doubt in my mind that the light shining at the bottom of that horrific pool of (excuse my language) shit and various fluids, was a multicolored glow stick and not my brand new iPhone, and perhaps my phone happened to coincidently die at the same time which made the light go out. I checked the platform, but nope. Gone. There lays my phone, haunting me from the bottom of that deep, polluted toilet.

So what would you do?

Well, it took about eight seconds of debating whether or not if it was worth it, and I thought it was only a matter of seconds before the phone was completely useless, so I had to think fast.

I think you know what happened next.

Yes. You guessed it. Standing alone in a pitch black porta-potty, I leaned over and immersed my entire forearm in that hole and plucked that sucker out.

Why? Because I’m a broke college student and sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

There I was, the girl sprinting in the back of the rave with God knows what on her arm, racing to security. Life In Color has this no exit after entry rule, and to my dismay the only real bathrooms with real sinks were of course after the exit. So I aggressively asked security to have some sort of soul, and after about 30 seconds, a lovely little old security lady named Jill came over and yelled, “That’s disgusting. Let’s go!”

God bless little old Jill as she frantically escorted me to the women’s restroom, grabbed my phone with no hesitation, and cleaned every little nook and cranny, while I scrubbed away the nightmare on my arm. Because of her, the night continued to be unforgettable.

Moral of the story: don’t take your phone into a porta-potty. Ever.

If you want to know if my phone survived…it did not.