People who have babies are fools. That’s not to say that foolishness is a prerequisite for having a baby; it’s simply that having a baby renders people foolish. If the saying, “A fool and his money are soon parted,” is true, then isn’t it also true that the one parted from his money most quickly is the most foolish? If so, that’s people who have babies, followed closely by couples planning a wedding and new homeowners. All of them will part with sums of money at the drop of a hat that would cause non-baby-havers, non-wedding-planners and non-besaddled-with-mortgagers (for the record, I am two of those three things…that I know of) to wince and quiver. The new homeowner gladly pops in her chip card for hundreds of dollars of primer, paint, brushes, rollers, roller pans, trim brushes and tape. The soon-to-be-newlywed cuts a iPad-sized cheque for flowers that will be binned before the marriage is consummated. The new parent buys everything there is to ensure his child won’t be antisocial, stupid, bullied, uncoordinated, maladjusted, slow, dead, unimaginative, innumerate, weak-willed, insufficiently stimulated, or a stripper. Just in case you think I’m complaining about these things, I’m not. (Other than the people who never buy jogging strollers and never jog with them and only take them on the TTC. I’m sure as shit complaining about you. But that’s a different idea that involves extra-judicial court proceedings, among other things.) I was saying how I was not complaining, right? I’m not. Because I don’t see these things as irritants, I see them as opportunities. These are the low-hanging fruit that lazy monkeys like myself are keen to pluck. This is the easy money. And Ideas Free To A Good Home is all about the easy money. The money is doubly easy when the idea comes from someone else. In this case, a friend I’ll pretend is called Cyril. He and his wife have a newborn, as well as every kind of mobile and bumbo you’re supposed to have. Cyril loves his daughter, I would guess, more than he loves beer and snacks. It’s hard to say, because Cyril has known beer and snacks a lot longer. In an attempt to enjoy them simultaneously, Cyril wore the baby in one of those front-facing papooses. But chips being what they are, they crumbled, and flurry of crumbs landed all over the baby’s head. I pointed his baby’s crumb-encrusted head and almost immediately (he dusted the crumbs off the baby’s head first) Cyril came back at me saying, “This is your next idea! A tray that goes over the baby’s head and shields it from the crumbs. It could hold my beer too! I would buy that!” If one father of a newborn says they would buy it, I’m pretty sure that means every father of a newborn would buy it. So let’s get on it, Baby Bjorn. If we need to get the moms on board, we can build in some kind of apparatus that keeps the baby’s head upright and say it builds neck strength. In fact, we should probably make that the main selling point. “You don’t want your baby to grow up with a weak neck, do you?” Beautiful. We’ll sell millions. I’m so glad I didn’t think of it. Ideas Free to a Good Home is a clearinghouse of ideas we’re too lazy to develop ourselves.
