My son Fenway loves to throw cellphones into the toilet. I don’t understand this fixation and I keep my phone out of his reach. His mother isn’t so lucky, since Mam needs the phone by her side. Last summer Fenway dropped an iPhone in the toilet. I admonished him and he sulked the rest of the day, as if I didn’t understand the method to his four year-old madness.

“Tor-la-sap sia.” I told him in Thai. It’s his native tonuge.

“Torlasap mai dai wai-nam.”

“You’re right. The phone can’t swim.”

My father would have tanned my butt, but I can’t be mad at my children and that’s part of my madness.

I went down to Tuk-Com where the service people at Apple comfirmed my fears.

“Phone sia. 100%.”

Thanks, Fenway. I put the phone in my bag and brought it back to New York. The Apple reps told me the same thing as their compatriots in Sri Racha.

This week Apple announced that they will pay out $53 million to settle with disgruntled iPhone and iPod owners turned down for replacements of ‘water damaged’ devices.

Upon hearing this news I called Apple.

“Sir, this settlement has to do with faulty ‘liquid contact indicators’.”

According to the Mail hundreds of thousands of customers who brought their malfunctioning devices to Apple, only to be told they were no longer covered by warranties because a little sticker inside had turned a shade of pink or red. No matter the problem, the company refused to replace any device with a pink or red sticker and must now pay what amounts to about $200 per claimant in the suit.

“Oh.” Fenway’s predilection to give phones a bath wasn’t covered by the legal judgment.

But it was worth a try.