There are days when one leaves the house expecting nothing more dramatic than breakfast, a little grocery shopping, and perhaps a casual browse through a phone store.
And then there are days when one nearly baptises an iPhone.
This was one of those days.
For context, I have been sick with the flu.
Not dramatically sick. Not Victorian-consumption-on-a-chaise-longue sick. Just sufficiently unwell to be coughing, sniffling, and carrying the general air of someone whose immune system has taken a leave of absence.
Still, I was feeling well enough to go out.
Which, in hindsight, was my first mistake.
Which begs the question: Why are things only 20/20 in hindsight? This does not bode well for people like me.
But I digress.
Earlier that morning, I had been contemplating whether I should upgrade my iPhone. I currently have an iPhone 16 Pro Max, which is still perfectly good, except that its battery capacity is now at 83%.
Naturally, this became sufficient justification to investigate the new iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Purely for research purposes.
Obviously.
So off I went to Machines.
And there it was.
The burgundy iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Now, I should mention that burgundy is precisely the sort of colour designed to make otherwise sensible adults start mentally rearranging their finances.
I picked it up.
I admired it.
I turned it over in my hand.
I considered its weight.
Its finish.
Its general air of expensive technological superiority.
And then my nose betrayed me.
Without warning, a large and deeply committed blob of bodily fluid flowed out of my nose.
Not delicately.
Not discreetly.
Not in a manner that could be dismissed as a slight sniffle.
It landed directly on my hand.
The hand holding the iPhone.
There are moments in life when time appears to slow down.
This was one of them.
I looked at my hand.
I looked at the phone.
And then I looked up.
To my horror, the saleswoman was standing directly in front of me.
She had seen everything.
Everything.
There was no plausible deniability.
No opportunity to pretend that perhaps she had been momentarily distracted by another customer.
No nearby explosion.
No fire alarm.
No convenient collapse of the ceiling.
Just me.
The phone.
The snot.
And one horrified witness.
I did what any mature, composed woman of dignity would do.
I fled.
I put the phone down and bolted.
Once safely outside, I immediately cleaned my hands with an alcohol wet wipe while furiously trying to erase the last thirty seconds from human history.
I failed.
And now I cannot show my face inside that Machines again.
In my mind, the staff have already created an internal briefing:
“If the small woman looking at the burgundy iPhone 18 Pro Max comes back, immediately secure the demo units!“
Perhaps my face is now the wallpaper on the MacBook demo units.
Perhaps I have been assigned a code name.
Perhaps there is now a laminated notice behind the counter.
I prefer not to know.
The most offensive part is that I was already sick.
Surely illness should come with some form of temporary immunity from public humiliation?
One would think the universe might look at a woman coughing her way through the weekend and say:
“She has suffered enough. Let her admire the burgundy phone in peace.”
But no.
Apparently the universe remains deeply concerned that I may one day run out of material for Monday Made Me Do It.
And therefore my dignity continues to be sacrificed for content.
I suppose I should be grateful.
After all, I went into Machines wondering whether I needed a new phone.
I left with something far more valuable.
A new story.
And all it cost was my dignity.