Carla reminds me of it from time to time. How it was the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever come up with—which is saying a lot. The incident in question happened many years ago, PK (pre-kids), when we lived in the Lombard Street apartment in the City. It was a glorious apartment, the kind of first apartment anyone who just moved to the San Francisco could possibly want. It was a corner unit that faced northeast on the top floor of the six-floor building. You could see San Francisco Bay and Alcatraz out the kitchen window. A quick tour through the living room and bedroom offered expansive views of Russian Hill, Cow Hollow, and Pacific Heights. All of which means there were lots of windows. And during the winter those windows sometimes got filthy. Because it actually rained a lot, unlike here behind the adobe curtain, where just the sight of water flowing in an irrigation ditch gets people dangerously excited.
Back to the incident. At the time, I kept thinking about the dirty windows, wondering if there was some way they could be washed from the outside. One evening, after dinner while finishing a bottle of wine with Carla, it came to me in a flash. The genius idea of genius ideas. The conversation went something like this:
Me: “I’ve got it! I know how we can wash the outside of the windows.”
Carla: “Really? Do tell.”
Me: “We can get a squeegee with a really long pole…”
Carla: “Wow, go on.”
Me: “Then I can get on the roof and reach down with the squeegee and wash the windows. It would be a cinch.”
Carla: “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. How do you think that could possibly work?”
Me: “Well, it was an idea…”
Carla: “Honey, have some more wine.”
Yes, my flash of inspiration, brilliant though it was, didn’t solve world hunger. It didn’t remedy the dirty windows conundrum either. And even though it was one of my dumbest ideas ever, I’ve always been impressed with the flash of insight my brain came up with, regardless of how fractured. It was this very kind of intuition that happened again just last night.
Carla had spent the better part of the afternoon working in the back yard. After dinner she mentioned how much of a mess some of the bird seed was making on the rocks underneath the feeders, not to mention the kidney-shaped patch of artificial turf; a smallish bit of green in our otherwise zero-scaped back yard. I always wondered if Bennie, Carla’s late dad, installed it so he could have a smooth surface to practice putting. Turns out that he tried actual grass when he first moved in, but it didn’t take. Artificial turf was the perfect solution.
Carla was trying to come up with a way to keep the area underneath feeders free of all the seed remnants which resemble tiny back hulls of grain. Her initial idea was to put a skirt of sorts around the feeder pole, which could easily be cleaned. Suddenly, the hyper chihuahua of my imagination flashed with an idea. An idea so ludicrous that I immediately snorted and laughed out loud. At least the years have taught me not to blurt out some dumbass thing before filtering it. The conversation went as follows:
Carla: “What?”
Me: “I just had an idea.”
Carla: “Oh great. I can only guess. Is there a squeegee involved?
Me: “You cut me real deep just now, Shrek.”
Carla: “OK, so tell me.”
Me: “No, I can’t. It’s ridiculous.”
Carla: “Try me.”
Me: “Well, there are power outlets on the back patio…”
Carla: “Yes, and …”
Me: “Well, we could take the vacuum cleaner out back, plug it in, and just vacuum the seeds off the artificial turf.”
Carla: “You’re right. That’s a ridiculous idea. But it’s still not as good as the squeegee.”
I had to agree. But that didn’t stop me from petting my inner chihuahua on the head for coming up with yet another utterly ludicrous solution to an erstwhile problem. I certainly didn’t scold it. After all, it was just doing its job. I also realized that flashes of intuition like the one I just had were probably similar to ones that birthed some of mankind’s greatest inventions through the ages, from the wheel to phrenology to pet rocks.
I also thought about how these flashes of insight have nothing to do with practicality. How they were like little whoopie cushions of the mind that flashed now and again, providing the mainframe owner with novel ideas in the form of internal pictures and movies. But no one said anything about the images and short features having to make sense.
Otherwise, I’ll let Carla solve the bird seed mess problem in the back yard. Meanwhile, I’ll keep petting the bony little head of my chihuahua imagination and be on the lookout for the next brilliant insight. I can hardly wait. I just hope it doesn’t involve a squeegee.
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