ZAP, bitch!

In 1992 a person named Lonnie Johnson woke up and discovered his baby had pissed himself. Apparently peeved by the fact that the baby did not cry to alert his wife, so she could get up in the middle of the night to change him, he devised:

An apparatus for use with a diaper to detect the occurrence of a wet condition in the diaper and produce an alarm signal in response to such detection

A clever idea, no doubt, but practical? I mean, have you ever tried to change a diaper on a baby that has just discovered he has legs and feet, and they taste really weird? There's no way you are getting that tab thing to line up and stay in one spot.

Fortunately for the not so innovative thinkers, the process comes with inherent notifiers, or alarms if you will (i.e. wet clothes, screaming, the sound of your wife getting up in the middle of the night, etc).

See, I don't think Lonnie's idea here is really attacking the root of the problem. After all, do you just want to know your baby has pissed himself after the fact? Or do you want to prevent the pissing from taking place in the diaper in the first place? The latter I would imagine, unless you're a heavy sleeper and the sound of your wife sleepwalking out of the room doesn't wake you up as well...

I propose a similar idea, but one that addresses the actual pissing. Instead of using that stupid little tab to detect the wetness and alert the alarm, you simply allow for two exposed wires. Which are connected to a battery. You see where I'm going with this? When the kid pisses, the exposed wires, fully charged from the battery, shock the shit out of the kid.

Think of when you were little and your mom grabbed your hand and stuck it on the stove top while she was cooking, and said, "there you little shithead, that's hot, and now you won't be so stupid as to go and touch it." Now, after the baby gets shocked from pissing the first time, he'll know not to piss himself again. So, instead of some alarm after the fact, the crying of the kid provides a pre-pissing alarm. At which time you can point to the bathroom and let him know how the smart people do it.

Let's face it, there's only so many innovative ideas to go around. Luckily for you, most of them are here.

Nick

Patent of the week

Google has a cool new search for patents that I'm hopelessly addicted to. You can find patents for some of the strangest things. As I come across some, I will try to share if I feel that they would be entertaining to the masses.

This one I think most of us who have boys can appreciate. This one is a piss barrier that prevents one from being pissed on while changing a infant boy's diaper. From the abstract:

The people and things in the vicinity of an undiapered baby are protected from being urinated upon by a device which has an open resilient foam band, which is "C" or horseshoe shaped.

If you have a baby boy, you are getting pissed on. It's not a matter of if, but when, and then how often before you get smart and take the necessary precautions... like... changingthediaperreallysuperduperfast... or the change and pray method, for when you're too tired to prevent being pissed on.

I'm not sure how the piss preventer would work really. But it's nice to think that someone who was sick of getting pissed on had the cognitive capacity to come up a solution. Most of us probably just hold the hand out and accept the pissing as a normal part of being a parent to a boy. Not this person though. Not this person. No longer will they be pissed on ladies and gentlemen... no longer.

You go anti-pisser person... it's your birthday... go on...

Nick