Heyya, Barkeep, I’ll have my usual: a 16 oz. glass of room-temperature vodka. But hold the lemon wedge, throw some egg whites in there instead, and mix it up real good. Jeff says protein shakes are the secret to his success, so I might as well try it. Wow, look at what I’ve become. Even my drink ideas aren’t original anymore!
Boy am I in a pickle. I need to come up with my next great idea by my 4 PM meeting, or I’m donezerino. Is that an idea? The word “donezerino?” Never mind, that’s a hack job. Forget I ever asked.
It seems my creativity has soured, and the glory days are behind me. Once upon a time, I was the greatest Ideas Guy in the biz. From Paris, Texas to London, Alabama there wasn’t a business in need of an idea that didn’t contact me: Ol’ Stevie Boy, the Idea King of the Mid-Southwest of the Lower-Mid-Southeast.
You should have seen me out there, brainstorming away. Oh, I was a sight to behold!
Cowboy hats for snakes? That was me.
Battery-powered toddler binoculars? Me again! They told me, “Steve, binoculars don’t need batteries.” Well, that’s why I’m the Ideas Guy, and they’re paying $79.99 so their toddlers aren’t bullied out of preschool for being binocular-less little freaks.
Wax-resistant martini glass? Also me. Put one of those glasses directly below a lit candle and just see if it cracks from the melting wax. Go ahead, I’ll wait… but we’ll be here a while, because no amount of wax is gonna break those bad boys.
But then I went corporate; that was my big mistake. No Ideas Guy of my caliber should limit his ideas to just one business. It stifled me—suffocated my creative process. They didn’t understand my potential. I was capable of so much!
See this box of lemons? Well, imagine each of those lemons symbolizes one thought. Now hold on one second… See how I just dumped all these lemons on the ground? They’re no longer in the box, and that’s exactly what I used to do: I’d think outside of the box. My thought-lemons couldn’t be contained to a single cardboard produce crate.
Let me clean those lemons up for you.
As I was saying, when life used to give me lemons, I made Arnold Palmers. I made lemon bars. I was like the first guy who thought to put lemon juice in Caesar salad dressing—it sounds terrible, but now you’d never dream of making a caesar salad without a little citrus, right? Of course you wouldn’t. I was making lemon history while all those other chuds were clogging up the marketplace of ideas with lemonade.
Just a couple years in a boring cubicle, and now look at me: My brainstorm list is more pathetic than Jeff’s idea to put milk in the oven to speed up the process. What process, Jeff? Why do you need hot milk that quickly!?
But Corporate loves him, and you know why? Sure, he wears a suit and tie, while I’m over here in my open-toed cowboy slipper-boots—trademark pending. But that’s not why. It’s because Jeff is thinking outside the milk carton. No one wants quickly warmed milk, but at least Jeff was the first guy to suggest it.
I never would’ve thought of accelerated dairy heating. That’s why Jeff is the new Idea King, and I'm just the impeccably dressed royalty in my edible cape prototype who Jeff conquered on his quest to the top.
Now Jeff will probably come to this 4 PM meeting in a boring, aluminum-free suit and tie bragging about his idea for portable chandeliers, or waterproof cufflinks, or multi-purpose ketchup packets. Meanwhile, I'm hacking it up with my list of ideas like “book made of clay,” “flexible TV remote,” and “potato straw?” I’m so screwed.
Ugh, picking up all these loose lemons sure is hard work. If only some sort of a lemon-collecting contraption existed for all those times you have to round up 200 individual symbolic lemons off a bar floor. I’d call it The LemonCollector3000, because it would collect 200 loose lemons fifteen times faster than by hand.
…Holy shit.
I’m back, baby! This idea is gold. The guys at my meeting won’t know what hit ‘em. Oh, it’s good to be King!
And Jeff can suck my lemons.