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Amusing to recall a time, age 15, when I invented a fascinating (to me) scent I called Arrivederci Aroma. (Spell check did the Italian which I never got right.) For some reason we had lots of oils; clove, peppermint, castor, wintergreen and such. I mixed until I found magic which, I admit, was not to the tastes of most who preferred to promptly leave or get some fresh air in a cow barn. (Bad sign when the tail goes up.)

I truly believed the name of my smell nice concoction was itself pretty darn good and could see store shelves displaying Arrivederci Aroma far and wide, well, at least as far south as Dubuque, which sounds like a place needing help. Being the sole believer I gave up and from then on essentially ignored our mysterious essential oils collection.

But all was not in vain. The people repellent feature struck me as potentially useful, but at a price I didn’t wish to pay. All a boy had to do was step in a dog pile and fail to get all of it off his sneaker to see how quickly a friend’s mother would shoo him out the door.
I wanted to repel others not be the repellent one. However, once a repelling notion entered my mind it tended to stick. I have a stack for proof, but in any case put the repellent odor idea to use when I had cause to work with a female who abhorred “scents.” One sniff of Jockey Club and she was alive with denunciation. Even the faintest touch of the finest essence brought a tirade.

Well, if you can’t lick them you might as well not try. Before any time I thought she’d be around I’d do a double or triple dose of English Leather, Right Guard or Brut, depending on what happened to be handy. I’d walk in. She’d leave in an angry hurry. Being liked less than before seemed a small price for the quietude

You wouldn’t think me much of an inventor or innovator. True enough. I’m more conventional or traditional than not. And, atop that, I can be a bit “gee whiz, what next” about things that are basically good.
Like braille added to signs in public buildings. That’s good, but shouldn’t there be some auditory signal telling the sightless where the sign is? How do they find them, or are all signs standardized as to location? I’d ask, but I never see a sightless person to ask, but I bet they’d know why gas pumps have a panel set for people in wheelchairs to buy gas. It’s only fair, of course, but yet somewhat strange to me who has, must say, his own ideas for the public good.

Such as disposal of human waste. We all do it. Sewage is a major issue, so with the welfare and benefit of all humanity in mind, myself and another grown dreamer came up with a solid gold idea I bet you never heard of or considered.
Ready?
Microwave toilet. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?
But if we could remove most of the nastiest stuff from sewage our treatment plants would last longer and have less difficulty with hazardous human waste. I’m entirely thinking of the public, of all of you when I imagine a toilet able to take all human waste and turn it into harmless salts (from urine) and useful fertilizer (from feces).

Now of course I don’t mean your countertop microwave. No-no. I’m talking a much more robust and carefully designed microwave unit.
You’d be bored (and having tried to explain this other times was much annoyed by the knee-slapping laughter) with the technical details of the actual desiccation pot, its removal method and treatment of the resulting product.
I doubt you’d care what lengths we went through to assure a safe high-temp chamber and design an elegant and compatible way to clear the chamber.
Well, we worked it out, every bit. Including the stainless steel venting system to carry off harmless water vapors. And smell. Even a nuclear giant of a microwave can’t zap the solids quickly and thoroughly enough to eliminate odor. So, as a slight detraction the vent has to go high, very high. Maybe into the plumbing vent? Maybe. That could work, though there are the plumbers and their codes to consider there. Best not go there.

But take heart, there is icing on the cake after all, and again I bet very few, maybe no one sees an obvious advantage to the microwave toilet. Ready for this, because it’s good. Each unit could come with a lifetime supply of color-coded wipes (for individual family members to have their own personal color). No more expensive toilet tissue to but throw away down the toilet. Your microwave toilet would leave the wipe unharmed, perfectly sanitary and ready to reuse again and again.

However, in doing some product research we found very little keenness for that form of convenience and savings. Just about no one wanted to reach in the chamber to retrieve their wipe. Just why these people were all so nearly universally hinckety about a little old wipe was more than I could understand.

No matter how often people were told and reassured it was clean and safe, virtually no one was interested or cared. Even yelling and threatening didn’t help. I was and remain flabbergasted and puzzled.
Other of my public-minded innovations was backing irradiated food. Excellent for preservation but turns out scares the begebers out of people.
I also got behind an alternative for burial and cremation with a nifty plan for freeze drying relatives and pets for continued lifelike participation in the family. Lovely to have a cat that didn’t shed, a dog who never barked or an uncle who was silent and odorless.
I can picture looking forward to freeze drying some I know. Be honest. Can’t you?
But the killer there is high humidity, burst plumbing or a leaky roof. Seeing a wrinkled face puff up in high humidity was a never-again experience.
But I’ll keep trying. For you, I’ll do it.