Have you ever won­dered about your ances­try? More specif­i­cally, those who came before you and are 100% respon­si­ble for your exis­tence. I’m sure many of us can attest to the fact that there’s a broad inter­est in gene­ol­ogy and the rea­son is we, as human beings, and inhab­i­tants of this world often won­der about our his­tory. There’s weighted sig­nifi­ance due to the fact that by under­stand­ing where you came from, you only then begin to truly real­ize who you really are.

For the past few months my own family’s his­tory has been lin­ger­ing in my mind. Partly because as I become older my knowl­edge of my family’s his­tor­i­cal back­ground becomes more promi­nent and mean­ing­ful to me. It’s pushed to the fore­front of my thoughts because it’s impor­tant to me to be able to keep my ancestor’s alive through their own per­sonal sto­ries of tri­umph, perserver­ance, hero­ism and conflict.

At times I feel as if I’m secluded in this world, but the real­ity of it is that those who lived tens, hun­dreds and thou­sands of years ago may have expe­ri­enced sim­il­iar sit­u­a­tions and occurences that I’ve had to face dur­ing my life­time. It’s a cycle, one in which there will never be a switch to pause, rewind or fast-forward.

Last week­end I non­cha­lantly asked my grand­mother if she would be will­ing to write down a biog­ra­phy of her life. The night prior to my ask­ing for this sim­ple request I won­dered if she would com­ply. I wasn’t nec­es­sar­ily doubt­ing her by any means, but it’s cer­tainly not an easy task to accom­plish, writ­ing down your life and try­ing not to end up with too much on the cut­ting room floor.

How­ever, after my ask­ing her to con­sider doing this, she sim­ply replied, “I’d love to. For you, I’ll do it.” At which point she went on to tell me a few sto­ries about her life includ­ing tales of World War 2 and the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor, two sig­nif­i­cant events in her life­time that would for­ever change his­tory for the bet­ter or worse, depend­ing on how you look at it.

After I got off the phone, I couldn’t help but think about those who weren’t for­tu­nate enough to obtain a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence of their fam­ily from a first-hand account. It’s lead me to believe that it’s extremely vital to the preser­va­tion of your ances­try to doc­u­ment your exis­tence through a jour­nal, hand­writ­ten let­ters, blog­ging or by sim­ply shar­ing your story with your fam­ily. Only then will you truly exist for many years to come and you never know, there might even be tall tales made up in your honor. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to become a per­ma­nent aspect of the gen­er­a­tions to come. 

There’s an episode of the Simp­sons where Homer, in com­plete dis­gust of how unevent­ful his 38.1 years have been, decides to use Thomas Edi­son as a men­tor to invent new things in his shadow. He believes by fol­low­ing in Edison’s foot­steps he’ll be able to give mean­ing to his oth­er­wise drab life.

After test­ing a series of inven­tions on his fam­ily, includ­ing a shotgun-projecting makeup gun and an elec­tric ham­mer, he set­tles on what he con­sid­ers his most prized inven­tion; a chair with emer­gency kick­stand legs for some­one who tilts too far back. How­ever, no sooner is he excited at this new prospect he real­izes while closely look­ing at a photo of Edi­son, that Edi­son him­self invented the exact same thing a cou­ple hun­dred years prior.

He then — with Bart’s help — attempts to destroy the chair at an Edi­son museum with his elec­tric ham­mer and even­tu­ally recon­sid­ers his plan of destruc­tion. Being the absent-minded guy Homer is, he leaves behind his elec­tric ham­mer inven­tion and the media mis­tak­ens it for a miss­ing Edi­son invention.

Over the years I’ve come up with silly inven­tions that wouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily change the world, but it’s pos­si­ble they might make some­one else’s job eas­ier. For exam­ple, I was a jan­i­tor for 6 years and often I’d come up with lit­tle inven­tions to stream­line the clean­ing process. One of which was a solar-powered vac­uum that would oper­ate with­out the need for a cord, which is a has­sle in itself when archi­tects and build­ing plan­ners for­get to put in a suf­fi­cient amount of outlets.

There were many instances where out­lets would be sev­eral feet apart and if you only have a 30–40 foot cord to work with you begin to under­stand why it becomes an issue. Even with the aide of an exten­sion, it still can be a pain to men­tally map out how you can get from Point D to Point G.

I’m sure a cord­less (non-battery pow­ered) vac­uum patent is filed some­where at the US Patent Office, but it’s odd that we’ve never seen nor heard of some­thing sim­il­iar on the mar­ket. As is the case for many patented inven­tions, the rea­sons for that par­tic­u­lar inven­tion not being man­u­fac­tured boils down to cost. If it’s too expen­sive to cre­ate the prod­uct then it’ll just sit in limbo until the sup­plies become cheaper, of if the inven­tion itself can be modified.

Often I won­der when the hov­er­craft from Back to the Future will make its debut or the per­sonal fly­ing machine that was sup­pos­edly going to be a wel­come pack­age for the 21^st cen­tury, at least accord­ing to the movies. What ever hap­pened to the cities above the clouds and below the ocean? For the time being these ideas will remain pure sci­ence fic­tion until the Wright Broth­ers of our time make them reality.

Are there any inven­tions that you’ve come up with or ones you’ve heard about that you would like to see the light of day? 

When you come across a stu­dent dri­ver, while dri­ving on a high­way or a city street, do you change your dri­ving habits in order to be the “model” cit­i­zen, or a good exam­ple for the per­son behind the wheel?

I’ve found that when I encounter a car with “Stu­dent Dri­ver” writ­ten on it, I’ll pause for a brief moment to think about whether I should actu­ally fol­low the law, at least in that moment or ignore the sit­u­a­tion and con­tinue the onslaught of rolling stops, sloppy lane changes and road rage out­bursts. If I’m not think­ing about that, I’m won­der­ing if the instruc­tor is using my dri­ving habits as an exam­ple of what not to do, for exam­ple, in my mind I can hear this imag­i­nary conversation:

Instruc­tor: (Points at my car) Yeah, see what he just did? Don’t do that. If you’re ever in a sit­u­a­tion where some­one almost clips you, just shrug it off.

Stu­dent Dri­ver: Wait, what did that guy do? (point­ing at me)

Instruc­tor: You didn’t see it? Geez, you need to really pay atten­tion when you’re dri­ving you know. Any­ways, that guy (looks in my direc­tion) screwed up his face, squeezed his wheel and sped up behind the per­son who almost clipped him. He’s not a model dri­ver by any means.

Stu­dent Dri­ver: No, I guess not.

Instruc­tor: In fact, just for­get I showed you that. I don’t want that guy’s bad habits to rub off on you. Hey, pay atten­tion to the road!

Speak­ing of which, have you ever made up imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tions of your fel­low dri­vers? I do it all the time.