Invention as part of her Reinvention

A SHE with a plan

To ease her kids' goggle pain

Gogglemate is born

I always start my most favorite blogs with a haiku...for no reason other than I find them so delightful to write!  (Dork!) 

Bad poetry aside, I am constantly inspired by others in The Decade of SHE.  Whether it's a SHE who went back to work or school after staying home with the kids or a SHE who ran/walked her first marathon or a SHE who planned and executed a fabulous charity benefit for a cause, the energy they exude from their accomplishments is contagious.  

There is no better example than my SHE friend, Karen.  The beginning of her story is probably a familiar one for many of us...her children were complaining.  In this case, they were complaining about their swim goggles pulling on their hair.  If this were my story, it would stop right here: "Stop complaining or you're going to bed 10 minutes early".

But Karen took the next step and actually developed a product to fix the problem.  This is an interview with Bob Sirott on WGN radio where Karen tells her own story. 

What's most inspiring about Karen's story is that she pursued the development and launch of this product with absolutely no educational or career history in this type of thing.  But what she has is raw intelligence, passion, and life experience.  Marry these attributes with a drive for results (and the power of estrogen) and out comes an invention that is truly innovative and functional. 

 

They are quite fun.  Not only do they keep the kids' hair from being pulled, but they make the goggles float and clearly sets them apart from the thousands of other pairs of goggles at a pool.  Seriously, if I wrote a haiku for every pair of goggles I've lost in my life...you'd never read this blog again.And there are lots of different colors and patterns to choose from. 

Here are some other fabulous inventions by women: dishwasher, fire escape, engine muffler (seriously), disposable diaper, Liquid Paper (no one under the age of 35 probably even knows what this is...I used it mostly as nail polish) and chocolate chip cookies (thank you Ruth Wakefield).