Re-inventing the Wheel

Wheel, schweel.

My husband often tells me that I keep trying to reinvent the wheel as I scrap and rewrite all of these different ways to plan menus, keep house, or write out kids' chore charts.

But picture this: Og, a Neanderthal who is trying to find some way to make his wife's life a lot easier (because let's face it: making your wife happy is the root of all invention) comes up with something called "zort". It was round, rolled across the ground fairly easily, and looked nice. It was chippy, because that's how he made it (using a rock to chip this one out of a larger rock) and maybe too heavy for even his strong and busty mate to make much use of.

So, he brings home the zort and says "ook ee zip zip zippy do" which means, "look, oh beauteous love of my life, I have spent many hours of hard toil creating this object to ease your burden so that you may respect and admire me, and be happy and no longer have headaches every night."

Ugga, tired after a day of tending the young and doing some hunting/gathering because Og spend his hunting/gathering time making the zort, says "erp er hebbity zoop zoop zoop!" which means, "you idiot! What am I supposed to do with that? It's just another piece of garbage you made to clutter the yard. Why don't you go invent something like farming so you can spend more time with the children?"

Og's feelings are hurt and his ego in sore need of fluffing. So he goes down to the watering hole where his Neanderthal buddies (who all know his name) put the yubbity berries in their water to take the sting out of their wives' words.

"Og," says York (whose line later becomes Brittish nobility) "hurk do slorp zing?" which means "Og my friend, why are your knuckles dragging so low today? Were you not in the midst of creating the so called zort which would become a catalyst of philosophical, social, and medical revolution?"

Og grunts, which to this day means "unknown" in the language of small infants and stubborn teenagers. He thinks about his zort, wondering what he could do to improve it. His stomach churns with resentment that his mate didn't appreciate it properly and that he had no ego fluffing to strut in front of his friends. So he bellows and knuckles quickly over to where the big rocks are and, over the course of several weeks, make many versions of the zort -- smaller ones, larger ones, smoother ones, chunkier ones (to which he gave the snazzy moniker "gear!!") more spherical ones, more disc-shaped ones. He also changes the image of the zorts by smearing red mud on them and calling them "wheel", marketing them to 3-6 year olds who have the most convincing power in any cave.

No one is yet sure what can be done with them, but they look pretty, and the holes in the middle make a great place for ornamental flowers. These were called "planters" because they couldn't think of a better word, and Og was indeed credited with inventing farming as well as beginning the lawn ornament craze which still persists among those who still heed their inner Neanderthal.

So, I ask you, what would have happened to all of human history is Og didn't have ingenuity, tenacity, and a far too sensitive ego?

My point is, I like to think that my solutions are somewhat ingenious, and I definitely have tenacity when it comes to scrapping old ideas and looking for new, and my ego is too sensitive to share these ideas with Man very often any more. After all, he has to go hunt and gather every day while I give myself headaches trying to come up with the ever more perfect and simple and motivating way to get myself and my offspring to tidy our cave.

Besides that, after our enormous computer brew-ha-ha this past December, I can't find a lot of my materials anyway. So I had to make new chore charts. And I've found yet another way to plan menus that looks so easy and simple and logical.

So if he complains about yet another new invention that we don't really need because what did we need the old one for in the first place, I'll smear him with red mud and tell him to go invent farming on the moon.