Man’s Greatest Invention

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In all of the history of the world mankind has developed some truly fantastic inventions. Of course many people will talk about the wheel. Others will talk about the internal combustion engine. Arguments can be made that the telephone was an invention that truly changed the world or perhaps the Marconi Wireless which lead to radio. Of course radio lead to television and that is certainly an invention that has greatly changed the world. Finally, of course the computer has probably revolutionized the world more than anything else and the computer led to the invention of the Internet although we may have Al Gore to thank for that. Throughout history there are minor inventions that I think we all take for granted that would make life so much more difficult if they hadn’t been invented. Look at the lowly ballpoint pen. What if we were still dipping quills into ink and writing that way? No one would ever be able to read a single thing I would write. I can barely make ballpoint pen writing legible. God forbid if I had to take calligraphy in school when I could barely pass handwriting. So, the ballpoint pen has to be a great invention when you consider it. There are those who believe more recent inventions are such that people should not be allowed to live without them. I have boisterous disagreements with friends who think no one should live without a TiVo. Personally I cannot imagine having that much to do that I can’t watch a television show when it’s actually supposed to be on. Should I go sit out on the porch when “Heroes” is on just so I can watch it on TiVO later? Weren’t commercials made for flipping from one show to another? My father and I have mastered this art and we are quite proud of it, dammit. There are friends who also feel it is impossible to live without a GPS device. Of course considering how expensive the damn things on I’d rather just have an atlas or maybe hire a hooker to sit next to me with a map and to whisper directions sexily in my ear. I have even been told by an old college friend of mine that he had a friend who once wrote a very funny essay about how the greatest invention of the modern time is the spatula. Quite honestly I don’t know what I would do without mine. Perhaps just reach into the hot pan and flip the meat over with my hands? I am guessing roasting and using a spit might be more popular in day-to-day life than frying things without the invention of the spatula. However, none of those things are what I think are the greatest inventions of the modern century. My favorite thing falls under the medicinal field. Once again here is a field that has a lot of fans when they are looking for a great invention. Penicillin is probably up there with one of the greatest discoveries of all time. Personally I always thought it tasted like the most horrible thing in the world when I was forced to take the liquid version when I was a child. There are those who would argue for the polio vaccine being one of the greatest discoveries and inventions in the medicinal field. I cannot argue with that except to point to the possibility that experiments with that vaccine could have lead to the AIDS virus. Of course, I have yet to see absolute proof of that so, until that arrives, I cannot really argue with this being a great invention. For me, though, the greatest invention of modern times comes in the form of a greenish liquid. You can take it like a shot in a bar and you can take it as a capsule. Regardless of how you take it this drug will knock you flat and make you feel like a million bucks more than any alcohol. I speak, of course, of NyQuil. If you have a cold and do not take NyQuil I have to wonder about you. Of course you may also have to worry about drug interactions and heart conditions and such, but for me, I would do anything to take this stuff. You know what it’s like when you have the cold or flu. Just moving takes supreme effort. You can barely breathe. You cough so much the entire house seems to vibrate. Once sip of this stuff though it like a hammer blow to the head. The world begins to spin around. You can lay down and slip into a kind of coma and it lasts an entire eight hours. It tells you what it does and then it does it and it does it in a way that brings sleep and, to me, there is nothing better than sleep. I love sleep. If there was a job that required the person performing the job to sleep then I would be the greatest employee that company had ever seen. NyQuil of course has DayQuil and that stuff is pretty good too. However, I tend to like things that are green rather than a bright orange. Also you have to take more of these capsules throughout the day than the ones you take at night. It brings beautiful, blissful sleep when you may have a difficult time getting any sleep. I don’t drink until I get drunk. For example I have never been drunk. I have never been high. I have never taken anything illegal to alter my mood. The most I have gotten is a tad buzzed from too much wine. I have never had so much to drink I vomited. I never saw the need for it. I never had any use for it. I saw other people doing it and thought they looked like idiots and decided it wasn’t for me. The closest I get to being high or drunk is when I take NyQuil. There has never been a cure for the cold. There really isn’t a cure for the flu. You can take flu shots, sure, but if you get the wrong virus compared to the flu shot you got then you can still end up with it. Viruses suck. The closest any of us can get is this wonder drug. It stops the coughing. It makes you sleepy. It puts you out like something an anesthesiologist might give you. It’s blissfully wonderful. It provides some of the deepest sleep you are likely to find. I have never taken a drug like Ambien or one of those prescription sleep aides as they like to call them. Why should I when I can take this stuff over-the-counter and sleep like the dead. Sure it may take a little while to get going the next morning, but I don’t care. So, you can have your computers and you can have your radios. You can have your wheels and spatulas. You can have your TiVos and your GPS devices. Just give me my NyQuil when I have a cold or the flu or just some problems getting to sleep and I am a happy man. I’d rather sleep than know an alternate route to the grocery store any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is now available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com. If you order now you still might be able to get a copy for someone for Christmas.