Looking for the next great invention
By Staff
Leada Gore, Editor
I have lost my keys.
Actually, lost is a strong word. I prefer to say I have temporarily misplaced them. This just sounds better.
All I know is I had them in my hands when I came home Friday. When I started looking for them Sunday morning, they were nowhere to be found. I searched the house, Sutton’s diaper bag, the sofa cushions, all the normal places. No luck.
And then a brilliant idea hit me.
Someone should invent a device that allows you to dial a number on your phone to prompt a beeper on your key chain. You could then track down the noise and locate your keys. Admittedly, this will not help you if you’ve dropped your keys in the church parking lot, but it would help if you, like me, have just temporarily misplaced them.
Such an invention would prevent me from having to go back to the drug store and get yet another card to put on my keychain. I hope there’s not a limit on how many of those things you can get. If there is, I’m pretty sure I’m there.
I shared my idea with my brother, a technical sort who just might be able to create such an invention. He shared with me a similar idea.
Inspired by stories of people accidentally leaving their newborns in the car, he thought there should be a car seat with an alarm. If you leave the child in the car after you put it in park, it will sound an alert to warn you of the problem.
I know the feeling. Several years ago, after a particularly harried session of Christmas shopping, I had an idea. What I needed was a small, personal electronic organizer that would contain my Christmas list, budget and any gift ideas. A shopper could pull out their Holiday PDA and have all the needed information at their fingertips.
Greg was skeptical.
Obviously, Greg has not had to keep up with a scrap of paper in a messy purse during the holiday season.
The next year, I was walking through the mall when I saw a display advertising a similar product. The small organizer did all the things I had envisioned, for the low price of $29.99.
Just think – if I had jumped on my idea, I could have $29.99’d my way to riches, maybe ending up on QVC hawking my cool invention. Then, I would have spent the next couple of years just coming up with variations of my holiday organizer. (Slimline? Voice activated? Organizer/I-Pod/cell phone?)
But I didn’t. And someone else did. And I’m sure they are now a rich person, sitting on an island sipping a drink with an umbrella in it. And me? I’m still looking for my keys.
