The Joy of Giving

My Uncle Jack is now an inventor. He is very skilled with electronics, learnt a lot about it when he served in the army. And he has now invented an App. The Christmas Present Tracker App he calls it. Actually he finished the first version of it 5 years ago, and the testing results are now so good that he is ready to sell the App to the highest bidder.

 

As far as I understand it works some way like this: you apply a tiny trickle of a semi-fluid invisible paste with an unique code to an object (i.e. the present you want to track), and afterwards it is impossible to see it with the naked eye, but you can track the object with your phone. And it is machine washable.

 

My Uncle Jack applied it to three presents he gave for Christmas five years ago. The results are interesting:

 

1. for his old Aunt Bessie he bought: a blue ceramic teapot with small white dots and the text "It's A Beautiful Day" applied to it in large handwriting. This was a very successful present. The very next day it moved from the living room into the kitchen as has stayed there ever since. Every time he visits he is served tea from that very teapot. Aunt Bessie spends a lot of time in the kitchen with the teapot. She is virtually blind, and do not often get out of the house.

 

2. for his younger brother John he bought: five pairs of men's boxer shorts. They have been to lot of places. Paris, London, New York  and Bradford-on-Avon to name but a few. One pair apparently was left in a motel room close to the motorway near Cardiff in Wales, although Jack is not sure it the tracking device got this right, as his brother has never been to Wales as far as Jack knows. The other 4 shorts are still moving around the world after 5 years, so now Uncle Jack knows what to get his brother for Christmas this year.

 

3. For his mother in law he bought: a beautiful King Kong clock. It's a model of the Empire State with King Kong perched on the top. More a work of art than a functional object. He got it from a charity shop for a good price. His mother in law was extremely thankful for the present. Two days later it was back in another charity shop. It was bought by a couple who later split up. It moved between their new separate homes for a few months before ending up in yet another charity shop. And charity shops seem to have become its destiny. 36 times it has left a charity shop, and 36 times it has come back to a charity shop over the past 5 years. 36 times!!! When I asked him if he wasn't sad that his mother in law had not kept the present, he told me to think of what this present had done for charity. "In just five years it has probably fetched more for charity than a gold watch would do in a lifetime," he said.

 

And now he is waiting for a buyer for his invention. "Aren't you excited?", I asked him, "you are going to be rich".

 

"I'm not doing it for the money", he said. "I want to give people back the joy of giving. It's called altruism."

Be sure to look out for the new App. I'm certain you will enjoy it.