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| All in the Family Tree Taking a Dip in the Gene Pool, or Willis' Theory of Relativity. |
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Alas, I've come up with no such world-changing idea. I've found no miracle cure, nor have I built a better mousetrap. The last time I sat up with an inspired look on my face was when I accidentally sat on the remote control, and the only time I remember uttering the word "eureka'' was while shopping for a vacuum cleaner. It's been said that genius is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. Without a single Great Idea to my name, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm 100 percent perspiration. Oh, I've had my share of ideas, all right. It's just that they never quite hit the mark. For example, I once suggested publishing an in-flight magazine for Federal Express. And the closest I've come to philosophical insight was when I pointed out that, given the umbilical cord, birth is one's first bungee jump. Not exactly "I think, therefore I am.'' And rather than wrestling with the great questions like the meaning of life, I find myself pondering questions like: If eyes are the windows to the soul, does that make glasses the storm windows to the soul? So, intrigued by the suggestion that ingenuity might be tied into one's ancestry, I decided that by examining my own family tree, I might find lurking in the branches some pioneer, great thinker, or person of vision (heck, I'd settle for a person of peripheral vision) who had contributed to my family's gene pool. To refresh my memory, I went to the attic and rooted through an old cedar chest filled with scrapbooks documenting the achievements of various family members. What I found was not exactly encouraging. Take my Uncle Floyd, the attorney. What was his contribution to the legal profession? A landmark legal opinion? An impassioned argument before the Supreme Court? No, Uncle Floyd's claim to fame is that he opened the world's first law practice on wheels. Using an old ice cream truck (His motto was "Have tort, will travel''), he would drive up and down the streets, ringing his bell, and yelling "Wills drawn!'' Unfortunately--and rather ironically--he had to give up his practice after he rear-ended a Buick and lost a whiplash suit. Uncle Floyd's status as innovator didn't make me feel any better about the possibility that my genes might be carpooling with his, so I desperately pored over the scrapbooks looking for signs of brilliance. But the more I read, the more my gene pool looked like a gene slip-and-slide. Flipping through the yellowed pages I slowly realized that Floyd was no fluke--rather than being filled with Great Thinkers, my family tree seemed to have an unusually high sap content. It seems my relatives managed to find futile ground in a variety of professions. In medicine for example, my cousin Milton, the doctor, devoted twenty years of his life trying to develop the first artificial appendix. And in politics my great uncle Millard's lackluster career culminated with his running for president against Eisenhower as a candidate of the Tupperware Party. (His slogan was "a pot for every chicken.'') Even in the field of entertainment, the scrapbooks yielded disappointment. My grandfather Max, the Broadway producer, was legendary on the Great White Way not for his hits, but for his misses. He not only holds the record for shows closing on opening night, he's the only producer ever to have a show so bad it closed in conception. And what did my cousin Manny--the stand-up comedian-- achieve in his chosen field? Biting social satire? Scathing wit? Brilliant comic timing? Not according to the reviews. Let's just say it's a bad sign when a comedian has to resort to tickling to get the audience to laugh. My kin even managed to trip up in the world of sports. Take my Uncle Ray, the college basketball coach. His legacy in sports: A conference title? A national championship? No such luck. He's remembered for running a program so corrupt that he not only paid his players, he paid them time-and-a-half for overtime. Disillusioned and discouraged, I put the scrapbooks back in the chest. If it was greatness I was looking for, I was barking up the wrong family tree. Photoillustration by Barry Willis |
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