Have you ever thought about how many things you have to do over and over again during your lifetime?

I think about it occasionally, and it happened again over last weekend while I was dusting.  I wondered how many times I had dusted the furniture.

I’d try to figure it out, but math has never been my favorite task, I’m quite certain the mind would boggle at the answer, and besides that I’d just completed doing some math when I balanced my checkbook, and I didn’t really feel like doing it all over again in the same day.

I must admit that I do get bored easily.  I’ll bet the first time I dusted a table I found it rather stimulating.  And, even now, I do get a sort of a kick out of seeing the lines the cloth makes in the tabletop as it whisks the dust away.  However, to get that reinforcement, you have to let the dust settle long enough so that you can see the difference -  which means you probably don’t want to visit my house the day before I dust.

And, just to be clear, I don’t use a cloth, I use one of those fuzzy things on a stick that is supposed to contain the dust, not just push it around.  And, I think those things are a great invention.  Which brought to mind the concept that if we really could do away with doing things over and over again, there’d really be no need for new inventions.

When you think about it, most inventions are a result of someone trying to make the things we have to do over and over easier.  For example, if children could learn by simply touching all the pages in a book, we might not have electricity, which lets them stay up late studying.

If we didn’t need to go into town every week to get supplies, we might not have cars today.  If we didn’t have to keep eating over and over again each day, there would probably be no Cuisinart.

So, while I don’t want to squash the creative spirit or sentence the world to mediocrity, I do sometimes wish there were some way to avoid having to do some of the same things over and over again.

I’d vote to eliminate cleaning.  I can’t think of anything bad that would happen if there were no dust, soap scum or mildew in the world.  And, Mr. Dysan could just put his genius to work inventing something truly useful.

I’d probably keep eating because there is pleasure in good food and good company.  However, I wouldn’t be opposed to a Star Trek type replicator appliance.  You’d describe what meal you wanted and the replicator would pop it out all ready to go.

However, if I keep eating, I’d probably have to keep washing dishes which I think is another thing we could all do without.  So, someone would have to invent a way to eliminate that task.  Maybe we could just take all the dishes and shove them back into the replicator for recycling.

I think the answer might be that inventors should stop fiddling around fixing the little things.  They should really get out there and attack things that cause of our repetitiousness in the first place. 

As far as I’m concerned, the person who invents a way to eliminate dust should be awarded a host of assistants who would make sure that the inventor never has to wash another dish as long as they live!