I think it’s a variation of the “call of the void”.

Your brain has an instinct to imagine the worst possible situation to keep you safe.

People lose stuff at subways all the time. Contact the staff and they’ll fish it up. Keys in drains can be retrieved with a magnet on a rope. If you lose something in a drain indoors, you can probably open the water trap and take it. Heavy things don’t just flush out easily.

I drove my friend’s RC car into a storm drain when I was a kid.

Or like the gap in the elevator?

A friend of mine managed to drop car keys there so yes, it actually happens.

He managed to get it out with some stick or something. So attach some sort of key chain to your phone case. At least there will be something to grab it by. And carry a string with a hook with you.

Those thoughts are not crazy. I feel like that every time I take a picture off a bridge or tall building and I’m leaning over the edge to get a better angle. I found peace of mind in a lanyard strap.

If I’m near an open window, I might have an intrusive thought of “what if I accidentally chuck my phone out the window?”

I have no idea how anything like that could happen accidentally. I grip my phone tighter.

Yeah I noticed there’s a decent enough gap in the elevator about a week ago and now I’m paranoid whenever I exit it.

You can call the city and have them open it and fish it out. Happens to my mom when she went to a friends for a game night. They were the ones that actually called people, we just got her a new phone.

The thought goes through my head everytime. One time I was on the middle of having one of those obtrusive thoughts in a carpark with the drain near my car and thinking “why do I always have these stupid thoughts?” And then dropped keys right down that drain as I was just about to go to work.

I was pretty lucky actually, it was an enclosed storm drain not connected to any sewer or anything so the keys couldn’t go anywhere and it was completely dry inside and I was able to call the number for the local council and ask for help who called these two guys that apparently actually technically don’t work for the council who told me that in fact the council weren’t really able to help with that anyway and in fact they wouldn’t normally either because of something tondo with the carpark being private property but because they happened to be out dealing with something else right near there anyway they’d swung by to help me out and they used a tool to open up this drain, hop in and pick up my keys that were visible through the grating. They did it all for me in about 10 minutes flat. I offered to buy them a slab of beer but they said they weren’t allowed to accept gifts from the public. I bought them each a coffee anyway. Universe was really looking out for me that day. I was only about 10 minutes late for work after the whole thing.

I used to live on a boarding school campus as an administrator. My kids and I were hanging on a culvert at a pond on the campus, I leaned over to look at something and my black iPhone 7 slid right out of my breast pocket and into the water. I knew that I had like fifteen minutes before it died. So I ran home, grabbed a wetsuit jacket (it was like February in Florida, cold enough to need this) and put on my board shorts and ran back to the water with a net. I waded in, felt my body sink down to my knees in muck. It was so gross that I wasn’t about to let my head get underwater. But I felt with my feet and used the net to pull stuff up from around where I saw the phone fall (while my wife pinged it with the Find My app). She watched the dot disappear and that’s when we knew the phone had died. Never found it.

I took like three showers after that, just to be sure. And I do not go near ponds with my phone anywhere except in my hip pockets (or in a sling bag)

No. It’s certainly something i consider and i make sure to have a better hold of my things, but it’s not something that distresses me or i obsess over.

This happened to my dad once when I was a kid, but obviously not with a cell phone but rather his keys. We learned a few things that day, one of which is that cast iron storm drain grates are even heavier than they look, but the other was that if you get your hands on a big prybar you get all Archimedes in its face and not have to lift the damn thing.

If you’re e.g. an average apartment dweller and haven’t got a 7’ prybar in your shed, I don’t know what to tell you.

I have intrusive thoughts about everything all the time lol

I feel like an intrusive thought would be more like wondering if you should intentionally drop your phone to see what happens.

Worrying about dropping your phone is actually smart and not intrusive. It’s very pragmatic to be concerned about the possibility of an accident and to try to prevent it. Some people don’t have enough of those thoughts…

Working around the stuff I do (boilers and turbines) there are constantly terrible things I think about accidentally dropping my phone in. I’ve dropped my leatherman in a few different problem things. I always just stand there looking at where I dropped it for a second before I take action. Kinda like when you fall and lay there for a second processing what just happend.

subway ive done. i waited for the train to leave and then jumped down onto the tracks

elevator shaft ive seen twice. building super will have the ability to open the doors on the bottom floor while the elevator is stopped on floor >1

storm drain? i have entered them but not officially