These May Help.......

here is a link to the audio version, in case you would rather listen to this blog: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdq5MT_Kr7E


Over the span of my life, I have been many things. Now, some of these things were, admittedly suggested to me while being shouted vehemently by other people and cannot be repeated in this venue, or in any other polite conversation. In fact, I would be pleased if they were never mentioned again. However, when I think about my life, all the things that I have become and accomplished, a few truths about myself do become glaringly obvious. One of which is the sobering reality that I am NOT an inventor. Oh, I have had my share of ideas over the years. In fact, one of those light bulb moments happened when I was in my early twenties. Back in the late 80's, a friend and I had the brilliant idea of putting a pizza on the barbecue. We used barbecue sauce, and the cheese had a very rich smoky flavor. It was delicious, a true stroke of culinary genius. But a month later, as I was driving past a Take-N-Bake pizza restaurant, I saw a sign that invited people to take home one of their pizzas and try it on the barbecue. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! That was MY idea, and at that moment I saw the potential earnings balloon from a successful invention begin to deflate. I saw profits and company stock swirling down a rather large drain.  One thing I do know for sure, though, is that my wife is probably pretty sick of hearing the whine in my voice whenever I tell that story, although I am not sure why. I have only repeated that particular tale of great tragic woe several thousand times to family, friends, strangers, and even neighborhood dogs. Basically anyone or anything with two ears that I can hold captive for five minutes.

If you have been reading the blogs that I have been writing for the past two and a half years, then you are familiar with all the ideas and thoughts that I have had. Gadgets that I have dreamed up that would simplify my life, from the Pants-Put'er'onr to the Back-Exploding Parachute. I imagined a restaurant, named Che'SpaZtic's, to a form of Ataxia karate, named Attack-Cia Karate. In my everyday journey through life, with Ataxia along for the ride, I continue to see and imagine things that could be possible, in my thinking anyway, and that could be used to help me along the way. Here are several more that I have recently come up with:

The Venetian Stairs.- Stairways everywhere, in every part of the world, would be required to be fitted to have this capability. The idea would be that every stairway would have a rod at the top and one at the bottom that could be accessed by a handicapped person and twisted so that the stairs would fold flat, like window shades, and become a ramp. Not a bad idea, huh? There should be an official watch group set up to go around and identify all the public hazards that are caused by stairs. Maybe I should form a group, named, Be Aware, Don't Forget Ataxians Living Life, or B.A.D. F.A.L.L. for short.

Spray On Clothing.- It has been argued that life is becoming too simple as we lean more and more on technology that is being designed to make our busy lives easier. That we are actually becoming dumber, while our phones and various gadgets become smarter. But what I am talking about here is not just another gadget or convenience for the general public. It is for those of us who, to varying degrees, are handicapped and struggle with every day chores, like getting dressed. The idea would be that another setting would be placed on the existing shower head which would allow a person to select their clothing for the day from their wardrobe. Once finished with their shower, they could again stand or sit under the spray, twist the knob to the last setting, and have the desired clothing applied. I am also thinking of a hand-held unit for those quick changes on the go.

Skinless Food.- More and more with the unrelenting advancement of time I am finding that a choke-free eating experience is, like a lot of other things that were so easily taken for granted, going into hiding, (they have gotten really good at this too because no matter how hard I look I can't find them). It's getting so that I can't even enjoy a cup of coffee without occasionally going for the violent liquid-spewing record. Actually, I think that tacking on a Liquid Emissions Event to the Olympic Iron-man competition would be appropriate. Contestants would run four miles, bike uphill five miles, swim in a strong current for two miles, snipe targets at a thousand yards, and then blow a mouthful of liquid thirty yards. But I digress. My main desire in this category would be apples that are grown without that pesky skin. I'd love to be able to pick up an apple and take a worry-free bite, like I did when I was a kid.

Self-Made Beds.- I know they freak out and worry some people, but I personally love fully-automated stuff. I know that right now several companies are working on the self-driving car. This would be really cool, and of the many benefits to this, one big one would be traffic safety and a reduction of all sorts of wrecks and preventable accidents. The only way I can see it working though is if everyone adopts the concept, and these cars don't have to try and share the road with people that will insist on driving themselves. But I'm not thinking about what could benefit me in a few years. I'm thinking about what could benefit me RIGHT NOW! After having just laundered and spent time making the bed, I can, with complete conviction, (imagine at this point that I am looking you right in the eye), say that I would unabashedly love to throw clean sheets on the bed and have them stretch themselves out, and tuck themselves in.

Self-Driving Screw Tops.- I know that I have written about my battle with the screw lid before, but at the danger of repeating myself, I feel that this particular topic cannot be overstressed. The screw top invokes in me a reaction that is much like Superman's response to Kryptonite. My legs go weak,(weaker), my vision blurs,(blurrier), and I get shaky,(shakier). Seriously, it takes me so long to accomplish this task that I could start to put a lid on a bottle around Valentine's Day and walk into the living room after a victorious struggle, only to find my family decorating the Christmas Tree! Okay, so that's a bit of a slight exaggeration....I would more likely find the family putting up Thanksgiving decorations. Really, it's not just the placing of the cap onto the bottle, which is also a problem not to be overlooked, it's the screwing of the cap so that all the grooves line up and the lid is sitting straight. Not at some kind of forty-five-degree angle, which is what usually happens during the first dozen attempts. Whenever I remove the angled lid so that I can take another run at it, I will always lose my grip and drop it. The worst is when I've dropped it for the fourth time and it rolls under the hutch in my kitchen. Well, then I just have to prepare for an extended journey down to the floor to retrieve the cap. It is a huge process, and all I am saying is that it would be nice if I could just hold the lid several inches from the bottle, it would attach itself, and begin to rotate its own way down the neck. That's all I'm asking...would it be so hard for someone to invent this?

Speaking of automated items, that leads to the last item that I would like to mention:

The Self-Removed Tamper-Proof Seal.- I realize that these are used for public safety, and they do give us a piece of mind to see the seal and know that no one else has been using our items in any way. But come on, the struggle to remove one has become, for me, a time to reflect upon my life and come to terms with whether or not I really need this particular item in the first place. I usually end up using my teeth, and that doesn't help either because I end up just getting a nasty paper/foil taste in my mouth and I give up. Maybe if the manufacturers would make the safety seal taste like the product hidden behind the armored covering it would act as a motivator. I'd be like," Hey, that's pretty good, I'm gonna keep going!" I'd then be motivated to do whatever it takes to get past the security barrier, instead of moving on to easier pickings. The way I see this happening is to have all products with a safety seal tied to an internal locking mechanism. Only when the item has been purchased, the bar-code has been scanned, and the item has left the store will it finally unseal itself.

I could keep going because there are literately hundreds of banes to my existence. It's funny, but I never noticed all the things I encounter that were never a problem until.....well, until they became a problem. But like always I find the best therapy to get me through is my ability and willingness to keep laughing at these things, and my attempts to overcome them.