Right Bulb

The young Thomas Edison shared a great deal in common with you and me. He constantly found himself painfully distracted by the natural world – bored with leaves, enraged by insects and stunned at the daily routine of gold finches. Only unlike us, he couldn’t lick his fingers and shove them into an electrical socket for a sudden jolt of new ideas when arriving at an inopportune intellectual dead end. That would come later, of course, once he was moneyed, ensconced in silk, and living a life of oyster-filled luxury on his vast New Jersey estate. You probably think you know the rest of his story. The moving pictures, the filaments, the confusing lack of facial hair. You don’t though. How could you?

It’s too deep of a tale. Too dark. Too dirty, and with far too many worms. How many times have you gone to a hardware store searching for the right light bulb to illuminate your darkened home? Many times, I presume. Did you ever once ask: where did light bulbs come from? Who invented them and how? If so, that’s the wrong question. Because light bulbs weren’t invented the way an industrious mind first decided to cut sandwiches diagonally. Light bulbs were found, they were discovered, they were uncovered. 

They were unearthed.

How, you ask. Huh, you mutter. Didn’t Edison or some other guy we don't know make the damn thing in the first place. Despite Tommy Boy’s aversion to nature, he found his secret in the garden. People don’t want to hear that though. They don’t want to hear that Mozart got a fax of fine sonatas straight from St. Kinkos c/o St. Peter’s print shop.

The answer is in front of us and has been all the time. They’re called bulbs, aren’t they? Why do you think that is? It’s not by accident, if that’s what you think. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago, a band of Jersey boys (most likely natives of the Frankie Valley) planted these light bulbs in the same dirt as the onions and the rest of bad breath crops. They waited, waited until spring for them to pop up and lighten their smoke-filled cabins. Didn’t happen. It took much longer than expected. Generations came and went, until Edison fortuitously plucked a couple out of the dirt and spun the story into gold. Or at least into electricity. 

They’re planted and harvested each year, have been for over a century now. Edison burned with an incandescent rage, but in this case, his timing was right. Light bulbs are tripped over or stumbled into, not made by some lone genius toiling away on a rotating stool. 

Because you never know what the next harvest will bring.