The soul of Sir Winston Churchill in my cellphone

At first I thought it was all in my head. That I was hallucinating what I heard, but when other people heard it too I knew it was for real. You’d think it would be cool to have Winston Churchill’s soul taking residence in your cell phone, but actually it’s pretty annoying.

It first started when I was making out with my girlfriend on her couch. I heard a voice softly mumble, “All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” We both stopped. It seemed to emanate from my pocket. When I pulled my cellphone out from it, the screen said ‘W.C.’. I stared at it blankly trying to figure out who I know with those initials, and why it pulled that up instead of a phone number, until my girlfriend said that I probably dialed some strange number by accident from all the dry humping we were doing. I hung up and continued with my work.



The next incident was when I was in the grocery store. I was digging through the row of kipper snacks when I heard, “I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” My initial shock quickly turned to joy when I realized that I had the soul of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century at my disposal. I held the phone up to my ear and listened. I could hear his labored breathing on the other end. “Mr. Churchill, sir?” I said hesitantly. “Is that you?”
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” He replied with slurred speech.
“This is great!” I bleated loud enough for a lady down the isle to hear. “Hey, maybe you can help me with something. My coworkers don’t respect me…”
“Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.” He interrupted, his voice raising with bravado.
“What? No, I was wondering how I can instill a sense of respect…”
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” He said seriously. I tried to digest what he said, apply it to my situation, but I could make no connection.
“No sir, I don’t think you understand…”
“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!”
“The price of greatness is responsibility.”
“You’re not listening. I’m trying to tell you that I want to gain the respect of my coworkers. There’s this one guy, Steve, he doesn’t finish his reports on time, and I keep looking bad because…”
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last.”
I waited a moment, trying to understand why he was so disconnected from my end of the conversation, then I asked, “Wait. Are you talking about Hitler?”
“It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.”
I didn’t respond. I heard a stifled gasp on his end, as if he were about to say something. Then he added, “Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash?”
“Oh Jesus, I’ve heard that one before!” I yelled. “You’re not even saying anything original, you’re just regurgitating your old lines!”

We were both silent for a while. I began to feel a little guilty that I had yelled at him, and was about to tell him so until he interrupted again to say in a meek tone, “Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.”
Then I understood. Here I had a man’s soul in my phone who was used to saying great things, and having people hang on his every word, but now in death there’s no one to talk to. He didn’t have the opportunity to hone his word-smithing skills with anyone so all he could do was spit up old, memorable quotes from his glory days. He was trying to be helpful, but was at a loss to offer any help. “I see.” I added softly. “Look, don’t call here anymore.”
There was a click on his end, and I never heard from him again.