A Letter to Samsung

Dear Samsung,

As a customer of Verizon, I have used your phones for several years now.

My first Samsung phone was a simple affair, light grey with a black and white screen. It was about the size of a small avacado. I dropped it into a puddle of water during a thunderstorm. I only noticed it had vanished a few hours later, and by the time I located it large vehicles had obviously run over it. It had, of course, also been marinating in a street puddle for three hours.

It was dead.

My second phone was slightly more advanced, with a flip up screen and, lo and behold, color! That phone served me well for several years until I dropped it into a bowl of boiling hot ramen noodles while helping my best friend through a difficult time in his life. He was in the middle of saying "I'm really glad you are here for me right no--" and that's when it slipped out of my hands and right into the Original Oriental flavor.

Possibly I could have saved it had I taken prompt action, but instead of immediatly removing the phone from the boiling liquid, I threw my hands up into the air and screamed, "Ahhhhh Tim! I dropped you in the Ramen!"

That phone was also dead.

After the Ramen incident I walked into Verizon and said "Give me the cheapest phone you have." They obliged and the model I left with is the very same phone that I left on the hood of my car this evening as I pulled out of the QuickTrip parking lot and onto a major highway.

A few hours later I began to look for my phone and could not find it. I went through a process no doubt familiar to many of your customers...using a friend's phone to call it, searching my house, my car, my driveway. Finally I retraced my steps, first to Eckards (where I had stopped to buy a razor and shaving cream) and then to QuickTrip, where I spied my phone laying in the intersection.

Oddly enough, this phone was not dead.

And this is the purpose of this letter, Samsung.

At first, things didn't look good. As I dodged traffic and approached the abandoned cellular, I noticed that there were several loose bits of plastic surrounding it, as well as some larger things that we'll just call "chunks" for the sake of easy identification.

In fact the phone looked as it had endured not only a fall from my Jeep's hood at fifteen miles an hour, but several close encounters with SUV's and perhaps at least one jacked up F-350. And possibly a dinosaur.

I draw this conclusion because that is precisely what I witnessed about ten seconds before I was able to snatch my phone out of the road. It was run over. In front of my very eyes. (By an SUV, not a dinosaur)

But, Samsung, you have made my day. The cheapest phone in the Verizon store survived it's ordeal and aside from looking as if a gorilla chewed on it for a few days, it actually works fine.

My theory is that it works fine precisely BECAUSE it was the cheapest phone in the Verizon store. My phone doesn't have a very good camera, an MP3 player, the ability to download things, I can't play games on it, etc. Less things to break means harder to break in my book.

And so it is that my ongoing poverty actually contributed to my happiness today. Had my crappy (I'm sure you will, in this instance, excuse the slight, Samsung) old phone been an I-phone like I wake up every day of my life and wish it was...then I would have had a pretty terrible end to a genuinely splendid day. And then I would have felt guilty about being upset about my cell phone of all things when I have so much to be happy about.

Thank you, Samsung, for keeping me grounded. Sure, I-phones will get the babes*. But can they survive being run over by every person who leaves quicktrip between 8:30 and 10:15 in Newnan on a Saturday night? I think not.

Your Loyal Customer,
Andrew Steven Marshall
Dabbler, Dilettante, Hobbiest, and User of Repetitious Words

FOOTNOTE: *The Editors would like to point out that there has never been a recorded instance of an I-phone helping anyone "get the babes." Nor has there ever been a recorded instance of wolves killing and eating a human being, but then again who would be left to record it, right? The views expressed in this blog are not the views of Apple, I-Phone, Google, Blogger, Samsung, Verizon, Viacom, Time-Warner, Universal Pictures, Five Guys Burgers, John McCain, Barack Obama, The Clintons, Douglas Adams, or Jean Valjean.

Thank you.