And I was so tempted to call this “My Second Ever Blog Post”.
So, where do bright ideas come from and are they always so bright? I had one back in mid-2004 as I was riding my little blue scooter home from the train station after work, through the greener-than-verdant rice paddies to my home in a perfectly idyllic Japanese valley.
Riding little blue scooters though Japanese rice paddies is a perfect setting for the stimulation of bright ideas and I thoroughly recommend it.
Anyway, there I was, as happy as anything, tootling along the narrow path where the wild boar ran free to scare the living daylights out of me and the frogs croaked happily (millions of them), when suddenly it hit me. A bright idea of gargantuan, life-changing dimensions.
Now… before I explain further, I must just add that tootling along said path through before-said rice paddies approaching before-that-said valley always made me feel I was going on holiday. I wasn’t. I was just going home. But every day, the little blue scooter journey filled me with wonderful and happy thoughts… and bright ideas. So that’s where a lot of my bright ideas came from.
But this one wasn’t just bright. It was so dazzling that I nearly ended up in a rice paddy as it obscured the sharp bend in the track ahead of me.
And here it is… was…
The whole grand, couldn’t-ever-fail-not-ever-not-in-a-million-years design appeared before me in a quarter of a split second. Everything was worked out even before I got to that bend, in something like this order:
- Become a millionaire.
- Start a website based on freshly breaking news stories for learners of English.
- Learn how to make a website before I start making one.
- Quit my quite well paying job to do it.
- Retire.
- That bend is getting mighty close – Don’t want to jeopardize the bright idea, do we? Easy does it.
- Trade the little blue scooter in for a Lamborghini.
- Hmmm… Money to buy stuff like food, pay for kids’ education… live, etc?
- Find out what html means.
- Aha! – Pour life savings into it. A fine investment it’ll be.
- Make a new news lesson every day.
- No one else does that.
- Keep the house in the idyllic valley, but buy the valley.
- Call it TeachEasy … dot com.
- What to tell the wife? (quit job… pouring of savings… go on a diet…)
- Aha! Yes… Become a millionaire.
And then I turned left, and with my heartwarming smile-inducing valley in full view ahead and the bright idea filling me with as much adrenalin as the beautiful landscape, I journeyed home to enbrighten the wife with my revelation.
She was cooking in the kitchen. It seemed the most logical place to do that.
Wife: “Had a good day, darling?”
Me: “Have I had a good day” HAVE – I – HAD – A – GOOD – DAY????
Wife: “OK, so what’s today’s idea?”
Me: explained story in full.
Wife: “We’ve run out of milk. Can you go and get some from the store?”
I was unperturbed, nay ecstatic. She didn’t flinch at the life savings part. She must have thought it was another one of those ideas I kept on having.
Back on to the little blue scooter and down the small track where the freshwater crabs walk sideways free, filled with thoughts of Lamborghinis and html and must, must, must not forget the milk.
Are bright ideas always so bright? Well this one varied between blacker-than-coal brightness to full-volume incandescence.
The life savings had a whoppingly huge part to play in this variety and will probably be the subject of My Fourth Ever Blog Post, titled, “What became of the little blue scooter?”
That really was her reply.
