Peter The Great Furnerk

I went to the Cell Phone Hall of Fame yesterday. It was an eye opening experience.

As I walked into the Hall’s very impressive lobby I was greeted by an immense statue of a be-speckled young man holding a cell phone in his hand and gazing off into the far beyond.

That statue could not help but get your attention. I immediately became curious to know who the man was who had inspired such a huge statue of himself.

The pedestal’s plaque read, “Peter Furnerk”. Now that I knew who he was I still did not know who he was. I asked the Docent who was standing nearby (they are always standing nearby).

The Docent was polite (they are always polite) but he did seem to be a bit unbelieving that I was asking such a silly question. For a moment it seemed that he was not going to even tell me who Mr. Furnerk was. It was as if he thought I was so uninformed he felt, “You Can’t Handle The Info!” I fully expected Jack Nicholson to appear and slap me around a bit.

He finally decided I was one or two steps above completely stupid so he gave me the truth to try and handle.

He explained that the sainted Mr. Furnerk was once a low level executive with a fledgling company named Cell Phones R Us. His stroke of genius was that he came up with the marketing idea used to convince the parents of the Good Ole USofA that they should buy their children Cell Phones due to Safety Concerns.

The parents immediately grasped the idea that their little tykes needed to be protected from Sexual Predators, Evil Doers, Strangers, the Riff, the Raff, Frick, Frack and those of a Differing Political Persuasion.

This marketing pitch changed the Cell Phone from a mere Sure-Fire Winner to an Unbelievable Skyrocket that will never come down to Earth. Overnight the Cell Phone went from an Adult Necessity to a Wet Slippery Necessity that that babies all across the Fruited Plain were gnawing on in their baby cribs at night.

Life is not always fair. Mr. Furnerk got a statue erected to him but the poor soul who first stood up many years ago and recommended to his Board of Directors that their company ought to start bottling and selling something they got out of their home faucets for free was fired and died penniless in a flop house in Altoona.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

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