That Was My Idea!…by Brendon Marks
Jeff Hostetler was in town the other day. I saw him at a fast food restaurant. Jeff is a professional football quarterback. I don’t know which team he plays for now, I lost interest in his career when he abandoned the New York Giants. The shirt he was wearing was black and silver and had some sort of pirate theme. He looked very different without his uniform. Those guys are so covered up even their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them. Not like basketball players who run around virtually naked.
I pointed him out to my dining companion who snorted, “That’s not Jeff. What’s the matter with you?”
“He has his name on his back, and his number. Do you know what the odds are there are two Hostetler’s with the same number?” I argued.
“It’s just some guy wearing a copy of Jeff’s shirt. Besides, if it were him, what would he be doing in here?”
I asked, “Why would anybody wear somebody else’s shirt?” Then I thought that somebody somewhere was probably glad that people are willing to pay for the privilege of providing free advertising for a product line or business. Next I wondered if the person who actually had the original idea was benefiting in any way.
Quite often ideas are generated by one person and developed by another. History records the developer, not the originator. Anybody who saw the movie “Forest Gump” knows that.
Bell is credited with inventing the telephone, but he actually was much more of a visionary. He knew there soon would be vast home improvement warehouses. How else can you explain the similarity between “Watson, come here. I need you,” and “Boop, boop, boop, associate from lumber please dial 204.”? He was trying to invent the public address system, yet he still gets no credit.
Speaking of vision, what about the caveman who first hugged a tree and said, “Someday, someone will cut these up and make them soft enough for you to blow your nose on.”? Have you ever gone to a museum and seen a pile of bones with the caption, “Gorg, circa 42,000 BC, first conceived facial tissue.”?
The best one of all is: It was Ben’s wife who first suggested he, “Go fly a kite,” but does she get any credit? Reportedly they were just dating at the time. We’ve all been there, haven’t we guys?
