IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME....
by Jim Freund
© 2022
What do these four situations have in common?
“I consider all possibility of danger in the new zeppelin eliminated.”
Navy Lt. Comdr. Scott Peck, urging the U.S. to build zeppelins just like the recently completed, German-made Hindenburg, 1936
“We believe that present conditions are favorable for advantageous investment in standard American securities.”
The giant U.S. investment firm Hornblower & Weeks, urging people to invest in the stock market, less than a week before the market took its biggest crash in history on October 29, 1929
“First I stopped a bicycle, cars, and a streetcar. Now I’m going to stop a train.”
Soviet psychic Yevgeny Frenkel, shortly before he leaped in front of a speeding freight train to prove he could halt it with psychic energy; the train ran him over
“Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead.”
Presidential candidate Gary Hart, defiantly suggesting to reporters that they try and verify rumors of his womanizing; reporters took him up on the idea and soon discovered he was apparently having an affair with model Donna Rice
The common denominator, of course, is that all four seemed to someone to be a good idea at the time – but, unfortunately, things didn’t turn out that way.
Recently, while rummaging around in the paperback bookshelf of my home office, I came across a pint-sized book from 28 years ago dedicated to that very proposition (and from which those four situations and commentary are quoted). The paperback, by Leigh W. Rutledge, is titled It seemed like a Good Idea at the Time – A Book of Brilliant Ideas We Wished We’d Never had (a Plume Book, 1974). It contains a number of real-life miscalculations like those above and also a potpourri of hypotheticals, many of which cut pretty close to the delusional bone. Here are a few of the latter variety that caught my eye.
An area that seems to generate what initially appear to be good ideas is personal relationships involving money and the issue of trust. In this category, Rutledge offers these foreboding lines of dialogue:
Aw hell, don’t worry about it – you can pay me back whenever you feel like it....
Oh, I don’t think we need anything in writing. Your word is good enough for me.…
Sound familiar? Here’s another one, perhaps a little less familiar, but equally chilling:
What do you mean I shouldn’t have given him the credit cards? Has it ever occurred to you that maybe he wound up in prison the first time because no one ever trusted him?....
The combined issues of money and trust often carry over beyond personal relations. This one, although a bit dated, makes the point.
The guy at the mechanic’s shop says it isn’t just the clutch, that the car needs a whole new engine. I think I can trust him....
Another pool of ersatz good ideas can be found in the denial of potential physical harm to oneself. Here are four of Rutledge’s that appealed to me:
Oh, for God’s sake, Alice – it’s just a little wasps’ nest. Go get me a shovel and we’ll move it ourselves....
And then –
If you’ve got a knife, I can pry the rest of this broken light bulb out of the socket for you....
And then –
If I can just get my foot up on this last little limb, I think I can almost reach the kite....
And finally –
Hey, Mary – can you balance the TV on the edge of the tub here, so I can watch the news while I’m taking my bath?...
A few of my favorites from the book feature a speaker who means well, but comes across as a little too intrepid. Here’s an example:
Carl and I decided we wanted to do a really honest and up-front Christmas letter this year, so we included everything in it – the marriage counselor, the miscarriage, little Timmy’s breakdown, my mother’s suicide....
Or this . . . .
I know they haven’t spoken since she tried to run him over with the car. I just thought we might help smooth things over by inviting them both to dinner on Sunday....
This next one raises the question of whether the speaker does mean well.
I decided it was time someone told her what everyone’s really saying behind her back....
As for this observation, the animus seems clear.
Funeral or no funeral, I think it’s time all these weepy people knew what a rotten son of a bitch he really was....
How about the use or abuse of stimulants? Here are two views that come at it from opposite directions:
Sure, he drinks too much and does cocaine; but I’m sure I can change all that once we’re married....
Oh for God’s sake, I quit drinking six months ago. What harm is one little martini going to do me now?
I would characterize the following as gently threatening domestic bliss:
If you’ll remember to wake up in the morning, we won’t have to use the alarm clock....
But it’s this one that gives me the most personal jitters.
Surprise! I cleaned out your desk while you were on vacation....
As for the latest revelation coming from your ambitious offspring:
I’ve decided to quit my job and go back to college to get a degree in medieval Hungarian literature....
I’ll close my borrowings from Mr. Rutledge’s book with two real-life ideas for potential tourist meccas:
“We’ll have a speaker system outside the camp, near the river. After a tour gets inside the camp, we’ll broadcast a firefight, mortars exploding, bullets flying, Vietnamese screaming.”
U.S. Businessman Giles Pace, discussing an idea for a multi million-dollar amusement park, “New Vietnam,” in Florida, in 1975
“This is the best time in history for the pastime of atom-bomb watching. For the first time, the Atomic Energy Commission’s Nevada test program will extend through the summer tourist season. And for the first time, the AEC has released a partial schedule, so that tourists interested in seeing a nuclear explosion can adjust their itineraries accordingly.”
Vacation ideas, from a 1957 New York Times travel article on the popularity and glamour of watching above-ground nuclear explosions (“You are there!”) near Las Vegas
* * *
Well, I’ve decided to try my hand at coming up with a few of these hypo’s. Here’s a half-dozen starter set.
Sure, to make their job easier the airline tells you to check in two hours before flight time, but that’s absurd – 30 minutes has always been enough of an advance arrival period for me....
I know, I know – the sky may be cloudy and the weather report grim, but the chance that any rain will fall from the sky onto my new expensive [suit] [dress] is so remote that I refuse to carry around an umbrella all day....
I’m not going to enrich those Uber people – I have no doubt there will be a plethora of yellow cabs outside when the show is over....
I’m very proud of myself – getting everything packed in advance and by the door in order to make the trip on time, instead of first wasting a lot of precious minutes searching for the car keys....
I only don my hearing aid for outdoor concerts and Shakespeare-in-the-Park – I’m certainly not going to need it to converse with two other couples at our table tonight in one of New York City’s top steak houses....
Even though I’m near 90, that ticket-seller at the movie theater will undoubtedly require concrete proof that I’m entitled to the senior discount – so I’d better break out my cane, frizz my hair, puff up my lower lip, and practice speaking slowly in hushed tones...
So, what do you say – can you offer up any hypothetical candidates or actual quotes of someone’s prediction gone awry? I’d like to have your thoughts.