Sometimes I wonder if idiots like me will ever understand what companies are up to. Take cell phones. That’s what most of us call them but the cell phone companies call them something else – wireless. Sounds like radio in England during WWII, doesn’t it?

So why do they insist on calling them wireless?

I finally figured it out, thanks to a Sprint commercial. You’ve probably seen it. It’s the one that starts with an exterior shot of a super hip retro diner. I think it’s in Manhattan, maybe the one on 23rd Street. Quick cut inside where the tieless and jacketless president of the company is sitting at the counter like any Joe would. He talks about the wonderful communication devices we call cell phones and why would we call them just phones when “these amazing devices” can do so many other things?

Suddenly I felt like Keats looking into Chapman’s Homer. I got it! They call them wireless because they’re more than just phones. I should have figured this out when I called AT&T to ask them to remove everything my cell phone does that doesn’t have anything to do with, you know, working like a phone. The AT&T lady said I was the first person who’d ever asked her to do that. “You don’t want to text?”

What?

Anyway, one mystery solved but others remain, such as why the wireless companies can come up with only an adjective, wireless, for their product. We can see it’s wireless. Wireless what? Even they don’t know what it is, except, maybe amazing.