Tell you about inventing the fax machine? No? Well, here goes.

Back in 1977 I was sitting at my desk holding a bunch of copies still warm fresh off of the Xerox machine. My boss, Larry, was in his office beside mine sitting at his desk. He looked through inter office door.

“What are you in such deep thought about?”

“Xerox copies,” I replied.

“What about them?”

I asked, “You know how a Xerox works?”

“No, never thought much about it.”

Well, being a recent graduate of the grand and glorious home of Orange and White in Knoxville, Tn, where I had taken physics I proceeded to explain the process. (Hey, it was ‘Jock’ physics, dumbed down for the jocks but it was still a four credit hour A.) Any who, I told him how the machine created an image of the item being copied on a belt and how the static charge attracted powder called toner. Then the belt transferred the toner to a blank piece of paper and fused it with heat.

“OK, so why the heavy thinking?” he asked.

“Well, does the static charge of the image get on the belt by reflected light or is it somehow applied electronically?”

“So, what difference does it make?”

“Well, if the image is transferred electronically, you can get the copy two feet from where the original goes in or 200 miles from it.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Dr. McDonald, my marketing prof would say the Dumb Asses all say I thought of that and the geniuses say I did too and here is what I did with it.

So, I guess that makes me (being kind) not a genius.

So, I’m sure we’ve all had our near misses or outright messes. Take a minute to tell us your tale.