Everyone's looking for that million dollar idea, aren't they? My husband has had a few, but I can't reveal them here because we don't want anyone to steal his ideas. There was one that might have made a million dollars, but also made me cringe. He had the idea of bunk bed cribs, or stackable cribs. I didn't like it. My immediate reaction was, "I picture cages, like at an animal shelter." I think he had a more playful image in mind. Fun bunk beds for little ones. I mean, what kid doesn't love bunk beds?
Then, I started reading Elizabeth Kim's memoir Ten Thousand Sorrows about being orphaned in Korea after her mother was killed in an honor killing shortly after the Korean War. I came to this paragraph:
... The orphanage was run by Christian missionaries, so it was there I was given my first taste of Western religion. The children were kept in slatted cribs, one on top of another, four to a stack. The cribs looked much like animal cages at a shelter -- four deep and lining three walls of that large, stark room. In all, there were probably twenty of them. They had latches on the outside that let the outer square of slats drop down, but they couldn't be opened from the inside...
Yikes. Not only had someone beat him to the idea half a century ago, but they also used it like the cages I envisioned. I sincerely hope this didn't net a million for the inventor after all.
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