Some fifteen years ago, as the wife and I moved into a new neighborhood, we were chatting with the neighbors—a lovely retired couple who had been in the area for decades—when in the middle of our conversation they suddenly got a worried look, excused themselves, and went back inside. Scratching our respective heads at the bizarre behavior, we turned to go back inside, when we discovered a gentleman standing on our driveway, behind us.
It turns out the man was a local, though he was a bit cagey on exactly where in the area he lived, and before we even learned his name he was quick to share with us his “amazing invention” that was going to “revolutionize medicine”.
We obviously had to hear whatever was coming next.
It turns out he was an inventor whose ideas had been “suppressed” because they would advance society “too quickly” and upset the status quo. He never mentioned who exactly had been stifling his research, and we got the impression that, to him, it was utterly obvious who was behind his lack of success.
His latest project, he breathlessly revealed to us, was a helmet that would solve the problem of brain damage.
“You see,” he began, still not having told us his name, “the problem is a lack of study. We can’t predict who will get hurt, or how, so there’s no research being done! I have this friend—a smart kid, great grades … a theatre kid,” he intoned sagely, “who is gonna put up the money to make this whole thing a reality. Do you follow me?”
We absolutely did not, but both nodded our agreement in unison.
“So this helmet, it’ll be like a football helmet. Only, when you play football you get all these concussions and can’t be scientific about it. This helmet will have pistons, like in an old car—” maybe forgetting that modern cars have pistons, too “—and with a push of a button, wham! We’ll be able to control exactly what kind of brain damage the subject gets! Think of all the research we can do if we can cause targeted concussions on demand!“
We became more than a little horrified.
“Anyway, I should get going. I can’t stay in place too long or they start finding me,” he gesticulated as if to swat a cloud of invisible gnats. He waved at us and ambled on his way, disappearing down the street.
As my wife and I looked at one another, blinking slowly and trying to process whatever it was that had just happened, our neighbors returned, emerging from their garage. “Uh, sorry about that. We didn’t have time to warn you about Walter.”
“Walter?”
“He has a lot of … ideas and he likes to talk about them, a lot.” They shook their heads. “He’s getting to be a bit much to deal with for us.”
Though the wife and I never saw Walter again, or saw any news articles about a man trying to get volunteers for a concussion machine, we will occasionally still surprise one another by dropping into conversation, out of nowhere, “you know, I just had this great idea for an invention…” and that’s about as far as either of us gets before erupting into peals of laughter.
What a truly surreal experience that was, meeting Walter.
It makes me wonder if there’s anyone out there that has the same kind of recollection of me, of some guy who said a weird thing once, that has turned into an inside joke nobody else would understand. If so, I think I’m okay with that, so long as it makes people laugh.
Header image by F. Muhammad from Pixabay, a great resource for royalty-free stock images
