How Far Would You Go to Retrieve Your Dropped Cell Phone Like A Toilet Or Porta-Potty?

If you think the title question will result in some sort of humorous blog about people dropping their cell phones, you would be wrong. This is a story about dropping a cell phone, but this story is very serious, in fact, deadly serious and is no laughing matter. Our attachment to our devices, our phones in particular is getting out of hand. The following story should cause us all to pause, take a breath and do some serious reassessing.

A woman in China dropped her brand new, $300 cell phone into an open pit toilet and her husband and mother-in-law both died in the attempt to retrieve it. The husband dove in to get get the phone, but was overcome by the fumes of the waste and lost consciousness, at which point his mother went in to save him and was also rendered unconscious.

Bystanders began going in one by one to help and all were overcome by the fumes and gasses. Rescuers used a rope to pull six people out of the cesspool. In the end,two people, the woman's husband and mother-in-law were dead.

Cell phones can be replaced, people can't. At what point does a person decide to risk their very life to retrieve something that in the grand scheme of things is meaningless and 100-percent replaceable and the loss of which, posed no threat whatsoever to the person who dropped it. I just don't get it.

This is a sad, tragic story that all of us can and must learn from. My heart bleeds for this family who has lost so much because of something that meant nothing. Let's all just stop, think, breathe and reassess...please.

[New York Daily News}