That Frightened Look

It never fails to amuse me.

I'll be lying in bed reading a book and unwinding after a long day, sipping a beer or a cup of tea when suddenly a new idea pops into my head. It might be something that I have been thinking about for weeks or even months or it may be something entirely new. Whatever it is, I usually mull it over for awhile before turning to my wife and asking, "You know what would be really cool?"

That's when it appears, that frightened look. Because she knows I'm about to come out with something that will at first sound utterly ridiculous, at least to her. She always fights me on these things. I'll explain it to her and she'll come up with 25 reasons why it sounds stupid or why it won't work. To be fair, she does occasionally murmur her approval but generally her first worry is that I'm about to spend time and money on materials and such for something that will prove to be a total dud.

I mean, she thought the Prybaby® was the dumbest idea she'd ever heard of. Who would want one of those and why on earth would they pay money for it? I'm still gloating over the crow that she continues to eat over that one.

Truth be told, I tend to enjoy these kinds of challenges. I will admit that sometimes she's right and I take her words seriously especially is she has a compelling argument against it. She has killed more than a few budding projects with her excellent powers of logic and analysis. It's usually with ideas where she has a good grasp of the issues involved. The Paint Goblet was a case in point or Catnip Cologne, two whacky ideas that might actually have worked had they not contained certain fatal flaws.

But with tool projects I am almost always the prevailer and besides, she knows that no matter what she says if I think it is worth doing I will just go ahead and do it anyway regardless of her opinion. So far I've got a pretty good track record I think...

So last night I was reading an interesting book, "American Green", about American's obsession with their lawns, when I started mulling over an old idea that keeps popping back up again. I thought about it for a few minutes, added a few new features and then came out with it. She shot it down immediately. The idea was a for a new kind of rescue tool sort of thing but she came up with some good arguments against it so I moved on to Plan B, a second and totally unrelated tool which I am not at liberty to divulge just yet. She roared with laughter at that one and shook her head instead of just arguing against it but I stubbornly stuck to my guns.

I will never admit defeat! :)