something to know

It has come to my attention that most people have no good stories. If you ask people to tell their best stories, you get blank stares and then something along the lines of “Well, once I lost my wallet.”

This has long puzzled me because I’m full of stories. How could I have so many, and other people have so few?

My brother made the same observation recently. Like me, he has plenty of stories that would make your jaw drop. And he noticed that other people seem to have none. One theory for this apparent discrepancy is that everyone’s life includes plenty of fascinating events but few people organize them in their memories as stories.

I have the same facility for jokes, which are essentially little stories. If I hear a joke once, I own it forever. Usually I’ll remember some seed of the joke – a key word or concept, and I can reproduce the rest of it by understanding how jokes are constructed. Apparently I have a story-oriented brain.

Now I suppose I owe you a story. Fair enough. I’ll pull one from the bag.

Several years ago, I thought of a patentable idea. It might be my best idea ever. The idea combines electronic calendars, such at Outlook, with advertising. So if, for example, you scheduled on your calendar “paint house,” that information would be sent anonymously to a service where house painters could offer themselves. The vendors – painters in this example – wouldn’t know who you are. All they would know is that someone in your zip code plans to have his house painted on a particular date.

Painters would respond through the system with rates and other information about their service. Most important, they would only respond if they were available to do the work on that day. None of their advertisements would appear on your computer until you clicked to view them. It’s the ultimate form of advertisement: It applies to you specifically, and you don’t need to see it unless you want to.

The system would check your calendar for all sorts of key words, from “vacation” to “birthday” to “graduation,” and match them with vendors that might be of interest. And of course you would have to check a box to “publish” your calendar entry. Nothing personal would be sent to the system.

My idea would have been a “process patent,” involving the system that keeps users anonymous and negotiates which vendors get through the filter. I imagined that vendors would pay to be part of the service.

Anyway, I hired a patent lawyer, searched to make sure no one already had the patent, and submitted my idea. I looked forward to selling the patent to Microsoft for a billion dollars.

A few days later, I went to the gym. I was working out on the resistance machines and noticed that some guy kept staring at me. Eventually he introduced himself. He recognized me as “the Dilbert guy” and wondered if I would be interested in doing something to benefit his start-up company. I asked what his company’s future product would be. A few sentences into his description, I interrupted him. “Hold on,” I said. “I have to stop you there because the service you’re describing – and you won’t believe this – I just submitted for a patent.”

“What?” he asked.

Somehow, in the most ridiculous coincidence of my entire life, we were both working on the same idea at the same time, and ended up talking about it at a gym in San Ramon.  When I described my patent application, he confirmed that it was essentially the same idea as his. Sadly for me, his patent application was in the mail a month or so before mine. Talk about your “oh shit” moments.

A few years later, I got my response from the patent office. They found an existing patent, about five years old, that they thought covered my idea. In my view, the existing patent had no resemblance to my idea, and didn’t explain the service that my patent was designed to accommodate. But the existing patent was so broad it could be construed that way. So I didn’t get my patent, and, I assume, neither did the guy I met at the gym.

Life is 10% effort and 90% lucky timing.