The ACME Key Losing Service, Zanzibar Office

For years, Brady and I have had a running joke business plan that would capitalize on the pleasure of finding lost keys.

Let me explain our business plan:

It’s such a relief to find something that you thought you’d lost forever.  When you find, say, lost keys, you have renewed pleasure in being able to open your door or start your car, as well as the pleasure of not being angry (at yourself for doing something stupid like letting the keys fall out of your pocket, or at your spouse or friend or whomever you blame for the keys being lost).  We believe there’s an unmet demand that the ACME Key Losing Service could supply.

 

So, if our plan were adopted, when  people wanted to do something really nice for a friend or loved one, they could purchase the ACME Key Losing Service.  ACME would then lose the keys (or whatever—there might be a deluxe version for important papers, favorite jackets, or the like) and then at a pre-established time, ACME would create a circumstance in which the key-losing-service recipient would miraculously find the keys.  The perfect gift for the person who has everything!

We’ve never pitched the plan because, rationally, we know there are a million problems with it, but still, there’s something to it. . . . 

The feeling of happiness every time the electricity turns on now is pretty fantastic, and I’ll bet that the electricians and sundry others who felt their ears burning during the past three months are feeling pretty happy as well.   

As a lite version of the ACME service, here are a few choice pleasures that you may not have been noticing: 

• the sound of birds, bats, and crickets at night, unmasked by generator noise
• being able to hear people talking, even in rooms with electricity
•   being able to turn on a light or charge up a laptop wherever it’s convenient, instead of wherever there’s a generator
• paying regular prices instead of hiked-up generator prices
• being able to use electricity guilt-free, knowing that friends and acquaintances all have affordable access (it’d be nice if the electricity were completely renewable, but the immediate guilt of knowing a friend doesn’t have electricity is—right or wrong—stronger than the more removed guilt of knowing that about the environmental impacts of electricity production)
• sleeping through the night in air that’s a comfortable temperature, even under a mosquito net
• being able to cook on a  four-burner stove indoors at a comfortable room temperature, instead of outside on the porch over a hot single burner in the hot, humid air
•  cold beverages
• restaurants that offer everything on the menu—including ice cream, baked goods, and the aforementioned cold beverages

The list could go on, but suffice it to say that we’re appreciating the wonders of electricity—hope you are, too!

Note: the pictures are from what we're calling the "Umeme Day" celebration of the electricity being restored, as well as of the electrical wires to our apartment--an indication of why there are electricity problems here. The baby is our neighbor's baby, holding a sign Calvin made that says "Electricity is good."