The bathroom has traditionally been the one place where you can escape from all of your problems. For a few minutes a day, while in the bathroom, you can avoid the telephone (you have a good excuse), no family members or visitors are likely to bother you, and all the normal worries of the day stay on the other side of the door. As Al Bundy puts it, it's the one place where you can really be "king of the castle".
People used to take a newspaper or a magazine into the bathroom with them and enjoy a few minutes of uninterupted time while doing their business. One morning while I was in a hurry to get to a meeting, my laptop followed me into the bathroom. It didn't seem all that unusual at the time; I was still reading, just like most people do when in the bathroom. Technology is a wonderful thing. But that was just the beginning.
With homework, telephone calls, and classes on the other side of the door, it seemed that with every visit to the bathroom it became harder and harder to leave. Think about it, who would want to leave their castle to brave harsh wind and subzero weather just to go sit in a lecture hall for an hour and listen to a lecture? NOT I!
Schemes for lengthening my daily stay in the bathroom started to creep into my head. It started fairly harmlessly with little things like taking longer showers, brushing my teeth a little bit longer, and getting dressed in the bathroom instead of wearing a towel to my room and dressing there. But soon I started making technological improvements to the bathroom. The addition of a case of pop and munchies more than doubled the amount of time I could stay in the bathroom. The technological level of my bathroom was growing exponentially. Soon the microwave found its way into the bathroom. (You would not believe how much longer you can hold out in the bathroom once you've got food in there!) The magazines and occasional reference manuals that usually followed me into the bathroom were soon replaced with a soldering iron and my latest project of the day. (Note, be especially careful when soldering something over your lap without a table.) It was great! My bathroom was really starting to be my castle!
With all of this stuff in my bathroom, I needed security. Somebody might try to steal my setup, or break in! It got to the point where almost every time I went to the bathroom, somebody else would want in. I responded to this threat by bringing in the goose gun, and Thud, my 6 cell Maglight. You never can be too careful when dealing with people on the other side of that bathroom door. For some reason, people sometimes start considering breaking into the bathroom a life and death situation, so you've got to be able to fend them off. (You'd think they'd be able to wait the 4 or 5 hours each day!)
Then one day, while cooking my dinner in the microwave, I must have gotten something too close to the sink. That surge protector that's supposed to harmlessly pop when there's a short didn't pop. Technology was no longer a good thing.
The jolt that ran through my body tingled a little at first. With the bathroom door shut and no windows in my bathroom, I thought I must have passed out, or that I might be dead or something. Everything had grown very dark. (At least the tingling stopped!)
Then I saw a bright light. After focusing a little and getting a little bit of my night vision, I saw that it was coming from underneath the bathroom door. In my confusion and attempt to get to the bathroom door to see if this was some sort of trick by someone trying to invade my castle by mounting a sneak attack, my dear old friend Thud must have gotten loose. Being dark, and not having my guiding hand to help him figure out what was what, he must have mistook me for the intruder, because he Thudded me. (Thud can be a little dim-whitted sometimes.)
Thud brought on a revelation, which only could be explained as some sort of out of body experience inspired by God himself. As I stared up at the fuzzy bright light coming through the crack under the door, I came to the conclusion, as the US patent office did near the beginning of the century, that everything worth patenting has already been patented. No significant new inventions will ever be made. As my revelation started to fade and I started to return to my senses, I thought about it, and decided that it must be true; Everything worth having must already have been invented.
There's no room left in my bathroom for anything new.
One of our newsletter editors, Bridgette Deleon, is moving on to other projects this semester. We at ACM would like to thank her for the effort she's put into our newsletter, and wish her the best of luck on her future endeavors.