White Board Leads to Nobel

In my opinion white boards are one of the best inventions to come along in my lifetime. Add some colorful dry-erase markers and it would leap to the top of my list.

On Tuesday, while working with a student in resource, I was having trouble making myself clear. (I know, hard to imagine isn't it?) So I turned around and drew an explanation on the white board behind me. Suddenly the light bulb went off and the student was enlightened. But to my surprise, so was I.

In that moment I thought about how handy it would be to have a mini-white board with me at all times. I could envision myself whipping it out of my purse and drawing a diagram for the unfortunate soul that I might confuse. OK, in reality I would spend like 5 minutes digging through my purse and eventually have to dump the entire contents out to find it.

More importantly, I thought about how many misunderstandings Steve and I could avoid by using a board. Don't get me wrong, we are very happily married on most days. Even so, at times I feel like I am speaking English and Steve only understands Farsi.

Later that night, the exact same night of my brilliant idea, as I was getting ready for bed I started to tell Steve some simple something that didn't require many brain cells. DISCLAIMER: I am in no way implying that Steve is an imbecile. I am simply acknowledging the fact that sometimes we can not understand one another. What should have been a simple exchange of information turned into a 10 minute exposition of something that wasn't that important in the first place. As I laid there in bed I actually wished I had a board so I could draw Steve a picture.

Even though the lights were off, I knew exactly what Steve's face would look like if I were able to see it. It would be a mixture of baffled, befuddled dismay with a hint of zoned-out thrown in. Of course I was eventually able to come up with a translation that got through and laughed as I fell asleep.

But seriously, think of the possibilities. Restaurants, stores, children, spouses, peers, co-workers, etc. All of these interactions would be much less stressful if we all had a white board.

Now, if only I could invent something that worked the same way for drive-in windows and computer tech calls routed to India I would seriously be up for the Nobel.