Feature Columns
Reinventing the wheel?
By Dan St. Yves
Thursday, September 18, 2008

If I were an inventor, I would likely be a pretty laid-back inventor. I‘d probably come up with ideas that would simply save mankind time, rather than revolutionize life as we know it.
Didn‘t someone once say “a minute saved is a minute earned”? Probably not a cell phone service provider, though.
For an example of the sort of laid-back inventing I am prone to, I have discovered that you can save on time-consuming, arduous daily teaspoon use by simply adding the cream and sugar to your next steaming mug of coffee before you pour it into the cup, thus allowing nature to do the stirring.
In addition to saving untold wear and tear on your stirring arm, that single logical process alone might save you at least one dishwasher cycle a year!
I might also come up with something like inexpensive tooth-fillers, for unsightly gaps. Who needs the high cost of frequent trips to see a dentist? Simply eat something white and pasty, like bread, which will temporarily fill in those gaps, at least until your next meal. If your teeth are yellowed from all the coffee you drink, consider a pineapple instead. Give me a few minutes, and I‘ll come up with something for cavities. No wonder MacGyver was such a popular TV character!
If I put my mind to it, there are probably hundreds of common-sense solutions, like the couple I just outlined above, for many everyday issues that plague mankind.
Why put teams of expensive, trained research scientists to work, gobbling up money that could otherwise be spent on a four-day winter getaway to Las Vegas? Or an i-Pod.
So many things we tend to worry about, in light of other world events, are truly minute. Like some other guy once said, don‘t sweat the small stuff. What‘s a little sweat among friends?
Simplicity can be applied to virtually every aspect of our lives. For example, has there ever been an alternate design for the common office paper clip? They‘ve looked the same to me for years, but surely someone didn‘t just hop out of bed one morning, twist a piece of wire, and become the richest joiner of loose papers in history. If I had been left to invent the paper clip, it may have looked more like an old-fashioned clothespin, like the wooden ones your grandparents used to use when they hung laundry outside on a clothesline.
The combination of wood and paper would have been entirely organic. Totally in line with current earth-friendly trends. Maybe it‘s not too late to run that one past a few potential investors. That clothespin idea also seems far more practical than my earlier experiments, involving magnetic sheets of paper.
You haven‘t lived until you‘ve seen some of the creative solutions I‘ve come up with over the years, for different conundrums. Even my wife has had to shake her head in awe, and roll her eyes up to the heavens in astonishment. But you know, rather than brag and come across like some loony, unqualified know-it-all here, maybe I should just sit down and start compiling a list. There may even be some value in picking up some patent forms.
I may be about to think myself into a fortune!
- Dan St. Yves is a humour columnist. His column appears each Wednesday in eVent! Check out Dan’’s website at www.nonsenseandstuff.com or contact him at ThatDanGuy@shaw.ca.