Gratitude

There are necessities in everyday life that did not always exist. Objects such as keys, paper clips, pop-tops cans and hair brushes had to be invented by someone. Engineers stewed for years coming up with the perfect design for paper clips. In fact, many heroic and frustrated lives were spent on conjuring and constructing paper clip designs that didn't measure up to the one familiar to us today. Yet we take these things utterly for granted. Is this wrong? Will this collective ungratefulness haunt us later? Probably not. It's human nature. Who has the time to ponder origins of the little things in every day life? Philosophers, maybe. But they spend their time on concepts more lofty than wondering how we should appreciate zippers and pencils.

That's why my friend Alan started a museum of ordinary things. His idea was that this museum would display lots of regular stuff and give explanations of how they came to be. An institution like this could make us a more appreciative society, Alan thought. I remember how optimistic he was as we moved a display case in the new museum before it opened. He thought that his museum could ignite a new pervasive feeling of gratitude among people and possibly lead to a more peaceful world. "Remember how nice people were to each other after September 11? People were nice to each other for once," he said. "They were polite to other drivers on the road – it was great. That’s what this museum can do."

At first, no one came. That was bad enough. But then it became funny to come. Kids would come in groups of friends and giggle all day long at the displays. Then it became cool among smug artist-types to go to Alan’s museum and they would take pictures of each other in front of various exhibits wearing their turtlenecks and high top sneakers and they would laugh. They bought museum t-shirts by the handful.

Alan was not happy. The response to his museum was the exact opposite of what he had hoped to accomplish. He would stand by clever ironic types and listen as they dramatically read aloud the history of the wooden clothespin and he would clench his fists in silent rage. For Alan, this was war.

What he did next was genius. He actually was making good money on the admission paid by all the ironic types. And since he didn’t have to worry about tight security for the displays, his overhead was low. So he put in a sound system and piped in country music – not the sad old kind of country music, but the new uplifting patriotic kind. And he hired a bunch of skinny models to walk around and serve cheese cubes with tooth picks in them. Alan's museum was a hit with tourists and the sniggering bohemians stopped coming.

I don't think I've ever seen Alan so happy. "Game, set and match," he said one night as he closed up the place on our way to get dinner. The best part was that he finally was selling all those extra large museum t-shirts that the artist-types didn't buy.