IF I COULD INVENT SOMETHING

A writing challenge of the Little Egypt Writer’s Society   

© 2018 Bill Murphy

Wouldn’t you agree that most inventions are the result of someone attempting to make work easier… and by default, life easier?  Invention is the obvious spin-off of ‘work smarter – not harder.’

I received my inventive spirit from my father.  He loved to ‘tinker.‘  When I was around 10, dad saw a simple wind-turbine which inspired him to see other possibilities.

The turbine didn’t have traditional blades.  Instead, it had a series of 1/4 spheres, ‘cups’ which caught the wind.  Dad then remembered the loud screech which aircraft tires made when they hit the ground on landing… burning away expensive tires as they contacted the ground.  If the tires were already TURNING before the plane touched down, he reasoned, rubber would not be needlessly wasted.

Dad figured that if RUBBER quarter spheres were molded onto the outside edges of aircraft tires, the forward speed of the plane would make the tires spin before they touched the runway… a huge saving on tires!  Years later we learned that this was actually tested, but proved to be impractical.

Then during the mid to late 50s, I had an aviation idea of my own, one having to do with ‘winglets‘ for droppable fuel tanks. This too was tested in the late 50s.  Alas, it too proved to be impractical.  Oh well.

Fast forward to 2018.  Our nest is no longer empty.  We have a daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter ‘temporarily’ living with us.  What do they say about ‘too many cooks spoil the broth?’  This I know this for sure, too many cooks can really mess up a kitchen… and a microwave.

Our microwave is 4 or 5 years old.  With attention, it has been kept looking almost new. The number one labor saving device in our kitchen is a $2 microwave splatter shield… when used.  Simply USING IT is the key!  Verbal reminders don’t seem to get the job done. Even signage hasn’t always worked.  It is so frustrating… to me.

HERE’S MY IDEA FOR A MICROWAVE, TIME, AND SANITY SAVING INVENTION.

I’d love to have a splatter shield somehow electronically LINKED to the microwave, so that the microwave will operate only when the splatter shield is properly in place. Period.  No over-rides.  No shield = no cook.

Yes, I know, “But it only takes 2 or 3 minutes to wipe down the inside of the microwave. Big deal!”

But let’s face it… those who don’t have the will, energy, or 3 seconds of time to simply pick up the shield and use it… are NOT the one’s who feel a burning desire to roll up their sleeves and spend 2 to 3 minutes cleaning up a big splattered mess.

Now where did I put my soldering iron?

 

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MY PROUDEST MOMENT

© 2018 Bill Murphy 

 

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.   Mark 7:21-23 (KJV)

 

Pride can be a spin-off from personal status or accomplishment. God puts pride in the same group as other deadly sins.

To be honest, I truthfully have neither done – nor been – anything which would cause me to be overcome with pride. I’ve never deserved the keys to the city, a legislative proclamation, or a brass plaque.

Can stating a lack of pride be a prideful boast?

I’ve won a few model airplane building contest, and I lettered in football in the 9th grade. Oh, and I had my photo taken with Philip Morris’ Little Johnny, Brenda Lee and Vanna White. (Not all at the same time.)

My childhood hero was Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier.  Years ago, before the National Air and Space Museum was built, and when my hero’s aircraft, the Bell X-1 was housed at ground level in an outbuilding of the Smithsonian – I ran my hot little hands down the side of that treasured piece of history.  My heart DID swell with childish pride that happy day!

But I don’t think that patting an airplane is what “my proudest moment” was supposed to be about.

If my memory serves me well, the year was 1983, and the month was December.  It was a typical Sunday morning, and we were at church.  It was a large church, easily having 500 or more in attendance at every service.  Our 4 daughters ranged in age from 12 to 17.

As church was over, and we were gathering up the kids to go home, our youngest daughter gleefully ran up to us, her face beaming with joy.  “Guess what?” she exclaimed.  “Today in Sunday School, we studied about Mary.  At the end of class we took a vote on who, in our Sunday School class, God would probably choose to be the mother of Baby Jesus if He were to be born today.  And they elected ME!”

To Molly, that was a singularly high honor.  She was as giddy as if she’d won the lottery. But to her father, it was one of the proudest moments of my life.

My proudest moment was not something I did – but a vote of confidence received by my youngest child.

Does that count – while maintaining at least some degree of innocence?

 

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WHO ARE YOU?

© 2018 Bill Murphy
The first blank on any application is usually for your name. But name alone is never enough. After name comes mailing address, city, state, zip, e-mail address, etc., etc. But still, this truly doesn’t tell anyone who you actually are.

Perhaps to better understand who you are, we should first ask the question of what you are, beginning at the your beginnings.

No doubt, you were given your name at birth. But birth was not the beginning of what was to become you. Contrary to what some find difficult to accept, you began at the time of conception – when a single tiny cell from your biological mother joined with a single cell from your biological father. Nothing else was added to this initial union of two single cells to make you anything other than who and what you are today.

Around 9 months after your conception, you were born into this world. Welcome.

There are very few organisms which are more fragile, helpless, and utterly dependent than the human infant. Left unattended in the finest luxury hotel that money can afford, and surrounded by wealth and extravagant plenty – if none was there to care for it’s needs, the infant would soon die. This is what you are – a needy creature!

Our neediness continues. But we don’t want to think of ourselves as needy.  Yet we are.

9 months in the safety of a mother’s womb is only the beginning of our neediness. We are dependent upon others for educating us on how to survive and how to thrive. We must be taught to talk, encouraged to walk, and this is only the beginning of civilized social knowledge and indoctrination.

Usually around the age of 12 to 15, the semi-adult human begins to believe they know everything necessary to succeed in the adult world. They are confident they have all the answers. Instead, they’ve not yet begun to face all the questions they’ll confront in life.

This is a particularly difficult time in a youngsters life, especially in our modern, if-it-feels-good-do-it, permissive society. During the late teens and early twenties, countless painful mistakes are usually made, some which leave deep and ugly scars. Today, teen suicide and murder rates are at an all time high.

Sometime around the mid 30s or early 40s, a somewhat foggy understanding of just who they might be, finally dawns upon the human creature. We call this maturity.

It sounds as though I’m not painting a pretty picture of humanity, huh?

Sadly, this is often the case of who we are, or rather, who become! You see, this is not at all who we actually are, or who we should be.

There are two schools of thought as to who (and what) we are. The first generally accepted thought is that we are all one big lucky accident. According to this belief, at some far point in pre-human history, our ancestors were nothing more than a slimy mass of inorganic chemicals sloshing around on the ocean floor. And then by some stroke of accidental luck, a certain ‘critical mass‘ was achieved, and life happened. It was they say, one grand and monumental fluke. Then over the eons, this living, slimy mass of goo re-created itself by morphing (in stages) into something better – we added fins, backbones, legs, lungs, etc. A few eons later we found ourselves growing wheat and corn and having babies.

There was never a PLAN for this to happen. It was all one big happenstance… which has never stopped happening. So here we are today. We’re still having babies right and left, and buying and selling – or stealing – one another’s wheat and corn.

In the grand scheme of things, only today really matters. After all, everything is only an accident anyway. Tomorrow, POOF, everything might be gone anyway.

With no central plan, mankind faced a lot of unhappy chaos. So, to keep things well oiled and running as smoothly as can be in this accidental world of turmoil and self promotion, mankind saw a need for order and purpose. The slime that became mankind, felt a need for reason. So he created a false purpose, and imaginary reason, a pseudo understand of what and why. This calmed his spirit, and soothed his troubled mind. Now all oiled up and covered by reason, he suddenly felt comfort in this artificial security blanket that humanists call ‘religion.’ Intellectuals tell us that man created God.

So, what’s my point?

The point is, what’s the point in life? If it’s all one big temporary fluke anyway – what’s the point in that? According to ‘intellectual’ thought, you and I my friend, are nothing more than super-slime, living a dead-end life, a fleeting life with no rhyme or reason or purpose, and someday – poof – it will all be over. The end. Nada. Period. Then you and I will return to the chemical state where this life all began in the very beginning. What comes around goes around, nothing has really changed.

That’s a comforting thought, huh? NOT!

Call me a fool if you wish, that’s your prerogative. But… I choose to believe there is a reason and a purpose behind life, a reason for yesterday, today, and tomorrow – a rhyme, reason and a purpose – and a plan. I also believe that this plan is far larger than you and I can imagine. And furthermore, because of this simple fact that there is a plan in place, there must be, and there is – also a planner.

I cannot accept as truth that I am simply an accident. I am not a fluke. That’s like saying that if you put enough monkeys in enough room with enough pencils and paper – in enough years, one of them with write like William Shakesphere. No! I’m not an accident.

This is not a grandiose and prideful statement, for I believe the same about you!

I believe that all things are a grand CREATION, and that they were created by a supreme CREATOR. I choose to believe that I am some small part of all of this, and that He knows who I am! Some choose to call this creator God, or a ‘deity.’ I call Him FATHER.

The thing is, life is not some monumental accident, and neither am I. I have a reason for being. I have purpose. My Father has a plan, and I have a small part of His much bigger plan.

That’s who I am!

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