The idea came to him and he couldn’t hold onto it. He wanted the world to know even if it was going out in an imperfect form. A different person might have kept it to himself for a while, refined it, constructed an elegant frame around it. Bill would have done that. Bill was always recommending that kind of thing. “When you wait,” Bill said, and then waited himself, not bothering to fill in the second part of the sentence. No matter. He had filled it in repeatedly over the years, with words and actions both. Everyone knew what Bill believed. Bill believed that patience was a virtue and that refinement and frame-construction increased visibility and reputation—and in turn the rewards that redounded to the creator of the idea. But he was not Bill. He could not wait or at least would not. The idea came to him and he couldn’t hold onto it. He released it into the world. Response trickled back, mostly positive, some remarking admiringly upon the brilliance of the idea, but a rivulet. He got in the car and started driving to Bill’s house, demoralized by the rivulet, already suffering from the ebb in ego that would intensify when he arrived at the house, pulled into the circular driveway past Bill’s many cars, and found Bill sitting out on his front patio being patient. Servants would be bringing Bill cheese and shoe polish and whatever else he desired. He braced himself for this ebb in ego as he drove up the hill, but he also opened himself up to the surge in excitement he would feel when the next idea came, which, if history was any indication, would be well before he arrived at the house. He wondered if he would have to excuse himself to use the bathroom and instead run out behind the house and release that idea, too. It had happened before. It would happen again. He steered the car with his imperfect hands and felt his own heart beating faster than Bill’s ever could.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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