Words for My Enjoyment

I Could Have Invented The Zipper

October 10th, 2006

People say they have ideas, but they never know how to make them a reality.

That’s the problem with society and people and societal peoples of societies around the world (which happen to be filled with people). They think they’re smart and they think they have great ideas and they think they can sing and they think they’ve got the greatest idea for the greatest product in the history of the world when, in fact, they don’t.

That being said, I could have invented the zipper.

There’s a lot of things I won’t take credit for. I won’t take credit for ending the Cuban Missle Crisis and I won’t take credit for velcro and I won’t take credit for semi-conductors, Jamba Juice or those Sharper Image Dream Machine things that people pay a hundred bucks for and that spit out white noise like there was no tomorrow.

But the zipper? I’d like to take credit for that one.

Thing is, had I just been born earlier in this planet’s history, I would have been the guy who would have invented the zipper for the simple, straightforward reason that I constantly find myself running my hand up and down my shirts in a straight line (the kind of straight line a zipper follows). It’s a habit or a nervous tick of some kind that I have, but had the zipper never been invented when I had been alive (decades earlier than my current life) I just know that the movement of running my fingers in a vertical motion across my shirts would eventually cause me to think something like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if the line I’m drawing with my fingers in this up/down vertical motion was actually an opening in my shirt? And then, wouldn’t it be great if I could seal that opening closed without any preparation or warning?”

And the zipper would be born.

When I tell the people who make up my inner-circle (or, my entourage) that I could have invented the zipper, they look at me like I’m insane. They say things like, “Yeah, well I hate to break it to you Pauly but you’re a few years late.” Others simply look at me like I’m talking crazy because, well, the zipper was already invented and unless I’ve got some kind of time machine that will allow me to go back in time, kill the child who will someday grow up to invent the zipper, and then return to present day where I’d invent the zipper myself — well, it just ain’t happening.

Still, I would have been a great zippahventor.

I often imagine the Powerpoint-like presentation I’d make to my investors. I’d hire some really really tall guy so I’d have as much zipper real-estate as possible for the demonstration. I wouldn’t want to fail miserably like Tucker, the automobile inventor who fell flat on his face. I’d serve hot dogs, beer, sauerkraut and cotton candy and we’d have circus freaks and stuff running around wearing outfits with zippers on them as well. It would be sort of like the World’s Fair of 1929, but instead of showcasing technologies from around the world, I’d just be showcasing the zipper. We’d have some kind of really great tagline like: “Zipauly Invented This!”

The tagline is sort of a work-in-progress, FYI.

Anyway, I sort of wish people could buy into the fact that I could have invented the zipper. People these days don’t really have the kind of imagination it takes to imagine that I might have invented the zipper because, well, it’s already been invented. They can’t think outside the box. They can’t just, for one moment, relax the mental restrictions society has imposed on them and marvel in the fact that I could have been that guy.

I also think I could have been the guy who invented silly string.

I think that sort of stems out of the fact that I always used to play with string as a kid, and there were times I’d wished there was a way to make string colorful, silly, and that it could defy gravity and shoot out of an aerosol can at speeds so fast that it would make your head spin. Sadly, by the time I had perfected my velocity divided by mass index equation, silly string would have already been invented.

Maybe I should try to be the guy who invented edible toothpicks.

Posted under I Could Be, Inventions, The Zipper, [This Category For Rent]. |