..and then my mind went blank

Tonight, as I was listening to some show on the television with half an ear, I had the flash of inspiration for The! Very! Thing! that I could write, become famous on, put my child through college on -- the concept that was my very reason for existing on this earth to communicate. Brilliant! I couldn't believe it -- here it was! And in just a moment, I would get up, come to the computer, start outlining it, and begin to make my mark in the world.

But then my mind went blank. Utterly and completely blank, like a big magnet had come down from the sky and erased the last 2 minutes of tape in my head. Gone. Completely and utterly gone. Like that dream that you have that's so funny that you just have to wake up and tell someone, and you turn to your spouse and say "I just had the most amazing dream -- there were mice in it, and ... well, a wall. Mice, and a wall, and it was so amazing and insightful, and funny! Oh, it was such a wonderful dream!" And your spouse, who has to get up in 45 minutes for work and really didn't need this, looks at you and says "You woke me up. At 3:45 in the morning. To tell me. That you had a dream. About mice. And a WALL?"

"Well, it wasn't just a wall, it was a kind of third dimension, and if you went through it, well, there were mice there too. But NICE mice." It begins to sound stupid, even to you, and you wrack your brain to remember why you felt compelled, again, to shake your beloved from slumber to hear this lame-ass excuse for something interesting. There was something else in it, something so huge that you had to wake up... But what WAS IT?

It was like that, really. The idea was just here -- can I recreate it? So I dashed madly to the basement to catch the Tivo before the program went off the schedule, to see if I could Tivo it and watch it again, and maybe have the idea again, and with 20 seconds to spare I find the spot in the schedule listing and it's ...

Educational programming from the local community college. No information on the episode at all that would let me identify it on the schedule to record. Nothing, but the list of sponsors at the end of the show. But wait! It's based on a grant from the Annenberg Foundation! Hooray -- a clue! So I ran up here to the office, hunted down the Annenberg Foundation, found the program, signed up for their video on demand program, found the very episode, fast-forwarded to the very moment where I had the very important revelation, and...

Nothing. No amazing idea. Cute program on Romantic Comedy. Nothing amazing. No insight. Certainly nothing that will put my son through college.

Maybe I just drifted off to sleep briefly during the show and dreamed the idea.... It had something to do with mice, I think. And a wall. Perhaps I should go wake my beloved husband and tell him about it...

Nah.