Reading The Will And Cellphones

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Script writers always incorporate cellphones in the movies.  Authors too.  In fact, cellphones are everywhere.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they are also in solemn occasions like reading the will.

“Please don’t switch off your cellphones.  It is what your brother and father wanted,” says the family lawyer.

Apparently, the dead person (sorry the deceased) left his investment properties, Italian cars and a platinum mine in Botswana to three beneficiaries, but the person who will get the lion’s share of the inheritance is the one with a clean bill of health, cellphone health that is.
Let’s say the deceased was highly religious.  The family lawyer scrolls down your online history, only to discover that the sites you visit are not appropriate for a choir master.  In fact, the family lawyer gasps because some of the photos look like her husband. 

That disqualifies you from the inheritance. The family lawyer goes to the next beneficiary’s phone, only to find that the sites you visit are anti-French, and some of your posts call French-speaking people in Montreal and Haiti despicable names.  This disqualifies you as a beneficiary because the dead person’s grandparents are of mixed parentage, his grandfather was from Haute Volta in Africa, and grandma was from Versailles in France.

The family lawyer goes to Beneficiary Number 3.  Is that me?  Hand over my phone?  No way.  I’ll rather forfeit the inheritance.  I’ll tell the family lawyer to re-direct it to another member of the family.  There is no way I’ll allow anybody near my computer or cellphone.  My online history will shock a cat out of its whiskers. 
By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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