I am before my Time

I have often had 'bright' ideas that don't actually work but occasionally I have brilliant and I do mean truly capital-B, brilliant idea. I know they are brilliant because I see them happen in the marketplace and they succeed.

How do these ideas come to me? We were sitting around doing homework sophomore year in college [this would be 1989/90 or so] and I said, "You know, they should put different sized tampons in the same box. That way you wouldn't have to buy different boxes all the time." Voila, a few years later my o.b. tampons began selling assorted size boxes as well as the one-size boxes that they always have.

I have several other examples like this but you get the drift. Then last night, we were walking through a sporting goods store at the mall and saw a display of Nike shirts that say, "Suck it Up." I had to laugh because this was a t-shirt slogan idea I had toyed with several years ago. Nike is using it to also show that the t-shirts have sweat wicking properties. I was pointing out that people needed to - you know, suck it up and move on. Clearly it is a common phrase and not original to me but to see it on a t-shirt, where I had envisioned it, it was amazing.

So, now I'm just going to throw out some things that I'd like to see and things I think would be useful:

• Post-it notes that are broken into sections like a grocery list
• privacy/ magnifier screen for computers for people who need bifocals
• and once again - minivans that are in fun colors. Not all mom cars need to match suburban siding.

Okay, there you go. I have some darn Cool Ideas and most of them are about 5 years too early so stick with me and we'll be ahead of the curve together!