Commentary by Dr. Don Newbury

Samsung scientists who packed too much charge into the latest smartphones may be graduates of the “Duracell School of Battery-Making.” Who knows what happened, but my Uncle Mort–reaching into the deepest crevice of his unbounded wisdom–believes some of ‘em want to both “burn something as well as start something.”

The 104-year-old denizen of the thicket in East Texas continues to be amazed about the far-reaching news topic making big splashes in public and social media.

Company leaders now are recalling Samsung Galaxy Note 7s. Mort believes they’d call the battery folks on the carpet if not for fear of their setting it on fire.

Mort’s not saying the Samsung folks are grandstanding. “This is a serious matter, and people who would quickly settle for ‘15 minutes of fame’ could wind up facing ‘15 years of law suits’.”

Mort has dealt with multiple dozens of so-called “inventions” that shook his work shop to numbers just short of the Richter Scale.

“There are safer ways to make the Guinness Book,” he claims. “Just the other day, an 81-year-old guy in China had eye brow hair measuring 7.2 inches.”

Guinness believes this to be a world record, but this heralded bunch of record-keepers had best take note: Guys around the world will challenge this record, figuring it would involve no exercise, no money and no great thought.

During my college years, I spent summers editing a small weekly newspaper called The Brown County Gazette.” It fell on hard times later, and is now defunct. It was published in Bangs, TX, something of a “Mayberry” community, where weekly headline stories were sometimes hard to come by.

One week, a farmer showed up with what he called “the largest watermelon ever grown in Brown County.”  I repeated his claim in the caption under a photo that made the front page on a sleepy summer day.

Woe was me! As the weeks rolled by, other farmers delivered melons, each claimed to be still bigger.

In those days, running newspaper photographs involved engraving costs, and the publisher was hesitant to expend such funds, except maybe to run with an obituary.

And even then, whether a photo ran sometimes rode on whether the person was a luminary, but that’s another story.

Think of the possibilities if efforts to cultivate long eye brow hair catches on.  Men long since bald have new hope. Many, no doubt, have abandoned hope.

Mort figures this to be the perfect time for him to set out on developing a “potion” to spur eye brow growth, with this leading to new hair styles. “We’ll have guys trying ‘comb-backs’ instead of ‘comb-overs’,” he cackled.

And he has strong advice for people holding stock in companies that manufacture hair pieces. “Sell now,” he advises.

Mort mentioned participants eager to participate can do so no matter their age or no matter their station. “Rich or poor, at home or in care centers, guys with no head hair will be welcome,” he bragged.

He warned, though, that if the eye brow rage catches hold, we may have to consider furrowing other parts of the body, since brows will be busy.

I guess we can’t have it both ways. Maybe some guys with heads absent of hair will have to decide whether to content themselves in being bald or reveal worry in some other manner.

Before leaving the subject of hair, I must share a vignette observed recently.  At a school luncheon on “grandparents’ day” (when we’re permitted to bring food of grandchildren’s choice and then go to the bookstore to buy them presents), a kindergartener couldn’t find his granddad.

The principal asked him to describe the missing grandpa.

“Well, he’s got a bunch of hair on his chest.”

 

   Dr. Newbury is a speaker in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Inquiries/comments to newbury@speakerdoc.com. Phone: 817-447-3872. Web site: www.speakerdoc.com.