Inventions, an American Passtime

 I am extremely messy in many areas of my life.  If anyone has been in my bedroom you know my boast is founded on reality. I am also good at allowing my drinks slip onto the floor of the car and spill all over.  Not a big deal, after all it's mom's car not mine.  But for convenience sake I have been considering inventing something which will stop car spillage and make me boo-koo bucks.  As an added bonus I may even manage to make some of the clothes I wear actually make it through a drive. But I  can't go into detail here, after all, I don't need anyone to jump claim on my patent.

I have known for a long time that there are no original ideas out there.  Great spins on ideas, lots of money flowing into someone's pocket because they took action on something that was floating out in the ether.  

Dad was a great inventor of a lot of gadgets.  None of them made fruition because like any Groves, we love to 'talk' not 'do'.  The one that stands out in my mind was his idea in the early 60's for a nail polish dryer.  You see, he knew that if we were able to polish nails, and then set them into a box of some sort with a heated fan we would have dry nails in no time.  Funny how within 1 to 2 years a device came out on the market that did that very thing.  I am sure we can all recall thinking of something and then within months someone has done it.

I have experienced this personally.  I have had an idea for a novel for many years.  I have even gotten a lot of the ideas down on paper (read: computer) for the book.  The name of the book came to me one night; I was extremely excited, it fit all of the areas of my story.  I was going to call it The Dream Walker.  Nine months later my favorite author wrote a character he called the Dreamwalker into his series.  It has caused me to completely halt my writing and  go back to the drawing board on what I will create as one of the characters in this story I am writing.  I don't want to infringe on what someone else used.  I need a little bit of  originality here.  Plus there is the plagiarism issue.  This just demonstrates to me that the ideas are floating around out there.  

We just need to tune in.  Use our dreams.

But, I digress from my main subject, which is inventions.  One of the local radio stations was advertising a pretty cool invention for those couples who have issues in bed.  I am sure, other than finances or straying, this is the single most cause for divorce.  There, I said it, and you all probably know exactly what I am talking about:  bed farts.  You see, evidently someone decided to utilize the technology used to protect our troops from germ warfare and applied it to blankets. Those bed farts will now be nullified of the power to drive a mate from the room.  Check it out.

Given that this is such a wonderful invention it has led me to research and discover what other unknown inventions are floating out there.  This one is cool:

I think a lot more kids would be willing to mow the lawn if only they had this great gadget.

Or here is a practical one that is probably a derivation of something in use:

I would use this!  Wouldn't you?

Finally, I will leave you with a youtube cartoon of some throwback crazy inventions.  Who doesn't enjoy a little bit of Boo boop ti doo!