Giving thanks for overlooked, everyday genius

Next week is Thanksgiving, when proud and upstanding Americans engorge on suspect foods, watch football, and beat each other senseless trying to get into a Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. I swell up with pride considering how we as a people have innovated on the celebration of this venerable holiday…

Perhaps the more reflective of us express a brief appreciation for the fundamental building blocks of life. Give some small measure of thanks to - you know - family, friends, health, etc.

But not I, dear reader. Today we are going to skip past that emotional fluff and get real about what deserves our thanks. Items and inventions that we see and use everyday, but spare little thought for...

Today I am giving thanks to the bland…the obvious…and the commonplace. Here are things that we should all be eternally grateful for, and never get their proper recognition:

• Aluminum cans. Capitalism thrusts some truly awful packaging at us - cardboards and plastics and child-proof, idiot-proof, theft-proof boxes that pile up in our lives. But one form of container objectively stands above the rest. Surely we all can appreciate the pure elegance of an aluminum can, the pinnacle of western society’s packaging prowess. Simple, functional, practical. Aluminum cans fit in your hand like a glove and provide the ideal drink container. The taste of any liquid is preferable than some dingy plastic bottle, and cans are lightweight and imminently portable. As a bonus, they can be easily recycled - lessening our trashing of the planet. All hail this cylindrical miracle!

  

  What more do you need in a container?

• Closed Captioning. Invented and made widely available in the 70’s and 80’s, closed captioning has long been a resource for the deaf and hard of hearing. But increasingly it’s used by a wide segment of society, including myself. I basically can’t watch a movie or television without it. Yes, my hearing sucks. But the way modern movie soundtracks are mixed and the way streaming services compress audio signals makes closed captioning a necessity without cranking up my TV like a rock concert. I believe its liberal use has prevented many a household argument and saved numerous marriages. Mine probably included…

   

• Spreadsheets. When the economic obituary of the United States is finally written, I hope that historians will dedicate a footnote on the pure magnificence of the spreadsheet. I remember sitting in college in the 90’s when a professor showed us how to use Quattro Pro to model a dynamic chemical reaction. I was floored. It was like the Red Sea parting for Moses. Something as simple as graphing a quadratic equation - which once meant graph paper and protractors and tons of elbow grease - became easy and fluid at your fingertips with a spreadsheet. Tracking money, managing vast datasets, programming formulas, running statistical regressions - all are second nature thanks to these programs. Quattro Pro yielded to Lotus 123, then Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. I literally use spreadsheets every day, sometimes for hours at a time - for work, home, even pleasure. My ‘Climate Change House Hunt’ models were built on spreadsheets, and I truly believe that 3-5% of the economic growth of Western Civilization in the past 30 years can be directly attributed to these utilitarian wonders.

• Wire hangers. I’m not talking about plastic monstrosities or those overly designed wood pants hangers with clips on them. No, we need to go to the primal functionality of a simple, wire hanger. About a yard of steel twisted into a functional triangle, what else is necessary? Wire hangers are exactly what they need to be and nothing else. Plus, they can easily be converted into a tool for solving a myriad of household problems. Need to make some S’Mores? Pull one of these bad boys out, unravel it, and you’re in business. Unclog a drain? Rescue keys stuck in a crevasse? Pick a lock? Go fishing? Poke a dead body? Wire hangers have you covered. You can hang a shirt or MacGyver the hell out of life with these little metal masterpieces.

  

  The Swiss Army knife of home organization.

• Elastic. Imagine you are living in Medieval Europe or even 18th century America…what are you going to use to hold your clothes together? Rope? Buttons? Garters? Tape? Corsets that squeeze your torso into oblivion? Suspenders? It’s no wonder that people back then were so angry and barbaric….they were frigging uncomfortable! But not today. Now we are afforded the daily blessing of elastic, stretching with our bellies and keeping things snug but not too tight. Your sweatpants, socks, hairbands, athletic shorts, ski gloves, and all manner of clothing depend on this bizarre, stretchy substance to keep things where they belong. If not for elastic, we would all be overly squeezed and supremely irritable.

• Print Screen. Growing up, if someone would of described the function of this one button, it would of seemed like spooky magic. Push it once, and the exact image data on your monitor is photographed. Then you can drop the image into any other type of document, share with others, store for reference, or copy. Print screen is one of the unsung technological hacks that makes modern communication 1000% more efficient. As the saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’…Print Screen operationalizes and proves that statement.

  

  “Show, don’t tell” improves most communications.

   

• Cut and paste. Another computer hack that goes under appreciated. The cut and paste functions - a couple of simple keystrokes - orchestrate as much productivity in our lives as any invention. Consider for a moment what it would require without them - you would have to literally retype information from one document to another, duplicate and hand paste imagery with actual photographs into your next file - copy, mimeograph, proofread, correct, and distribute. Flocks of secretaries in offices once existed to perform these basic functions. But no more. Today you “right-click”, tap, and drop immeasurably complex information from one document to another - error free and within a nanosecond. I use cut and paste literally dozens of times every day…and cannot imagine life without it.

• Tortilla chips. I’m not kidding. Tortilla chips stitch together the fabric of society like nothing else. I’m not sure if they were invented by the Aztecs or some border town Tex-Mex restaurant, but whoever launched these salty snacks into the universe deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. A perfect delivery system for salsa, guacamole, queso, etc. Make some nachos, or just eat them plain. Not a week goes by without me munching down on these, and I thank God for them.

So there you have it. Things that you use every day that you should take a moment to appreciate. This list could continue…for we all thrive in a society of under appreciated luxury.

So next time you are typing on your laptop or at the grocery store, or staring at clothes in your closet…think on the pure, practical elegance of the items around us, and give a small nod of gratitude.

What are you thankful for?

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Disclaimer:

All content and opinions are solely those of the author (Jack), and not representative of my employer, former employers, clients, anyone in Congress, my family, former college roommates, Baptists, the good citizens of Colorado, or my dog Mabel.