It is astonishing sometimes, when you have a truly good idea, how quickly it will be adopted by the rest of the world.
For example, you loyal readers of Ocelopotamus will surely remember my “tea-upon-ice” idea from last week. (Idea is too small a word, really. Discovery? Breakthrough? Epiphany?)
And I’m sure you all have been drinking nothing else since I posted it.
Well, knock me down with a feather, but apparently tea-upon-ice is already being served in restaurants across our land, within less than a week of my inventing it!
I discovered this when I was out dining with a friend, and he casually asked the waitress for a glass of “iced tea.” I was so pleased by this small tribute to my invention that I didn’t even bother to correct him for getting the name wrong. And I was prepared to chuckle at the puzzlement of the waitress when she asked him to explain this unheard-of thing he’d just asked for.
Instead, she walked away without a word, and came back a few moments later with a tall glass of nothing else but my cool, delicious brainchild, tea-upon-ice! It came garnished with a large wedge of lemon, which I found interesting — it’s always fascinating to see the way others embellish and adapt one’s ideas.
I asked for a glass myself, and found it to be a fairly faithful reproduction of what I had created in the kitchen of my home, if perhaps made with a slightly inferior quality of tea. But still!
I did make a point of admonishing my friend that he was not to reveal me to the waitress or the other patrons as the inventor of this miraculous drink — I didn’t want a fuss made, or for people to think they must pay me tribute every time they enjoy it. I am not the sort of vainglorious creator who needs everyone kowtowing to him and thanking him all the time!
My friend, amused at my modesty, showed me that tea-upon-ice was even on the restaurant’s menu — they must have had them printed up very recently! — although this establishment, like my friend, had mangled the name and was referring to it by this slightly less graceful appellation — “iced tea.”
I suppose I must get used to that. When you give away an idea for free, you let go of it a little and must let others make of it what they wish — even if this includes calling it by the wrong name.
As I have reflected previously, it is a good thing for the world that I am not a greedy man. Someone else might be making hundreds, even thousands of dollars from a discovery like this, but I — I am content to know that I have transformed the beverage world forever.
perhaps it will come as some small consolation that if this idea truly has caught on globally, your obituary one day may have the headline, “Writer, claimed to be ‘chilled tea’ inventor.”
Some might suggest it is equally likely to be, “‘Chilled Tea’ inventor, claimed to be writer.”
Sometimes ideas are like people. If you love one, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was. I think tea-upon-ice came back to you at that restaurant.
Binny, you are so right! It’s like a romantic comedy where tea-upon-ice took a cab to the airport to stop me from getting on that plane and flying out of its life forever.
Yes, and in the sequel (Beneath the Tea-Upon-Ice), at the end, after the two of you narrowly escape death at the hands of goons and henchmen and manage instead to hold them long enough for the police to come, you and your idea will be leaning on the police cruiser’s rear bumper, wrapped in police blankets, sipping hot coffee together, and your idea’s head will fall onto your shoulder, and you will put your arm around your idea, and then there will be an 80s song and the credits.
Ocelopotamus — The Nod: Wednesday, September 19 (with a Moving Addendum) // Sep 12, 2007 at 2:49 pm
[…] the world still remember me then? Will you? And will the hoi polloi still be mad for tea-upon-ice when the cool autumnal weather sets […]