Word of the Day: Ingenuity

in·ge·nu·i·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (nj-n-t, -ny-)
n. pl. in·ge·nu·i·ties
Inventive skill or imagination; cleverness.
Imaginative and clever design or construction: a narrative plot of great ingenuity.
An ingenious or imaginative contrivance.

Now THIS is genius in action if I've ever seen it. Completely brilliant this dude is, forming a whole new "unknown" life around an episode of what he says to be complete amnesia.

Here's the story in a nutshell. This dude wakes up in a subway and can't remember who he is, etc. The police call a number mysteriously written on a note in his bag, and he's picked up by a friend and taken to a posh Manhattan condo where he lives. He then spends the next years of his life relearning everything -- EVERYthing.

Believable? Sure. But now there's a documentary about it. And there's only circumstantial evidence that he's telling the truth because there have been no real tests done to prove it.

You see, here's what I think. As the story says "pre-amnesia Bruce was a slightly arrogant, hard-edged cynic". I think Bruce decided he was sick of himself and needed to change. How better to do it than one day miraculously get amnesia. As it says "He lost a lot of his cockiness. He became nicer." It's frankly a pretty ingenius plan for reinventing yourself. It's like a real-life Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Only with a few rather tedious drawbacks, such as the fact that you must remember what you don't remember. You might launch into a conversation about last Easter and forget that you weren't supposed to remember that. However, the benefits are apparent. You could snub anyone and everyone. "Do I know you?" You would never have to apologize for being a complete jerk the whole first part of your life, and now that you're really nice, people can't hold the old-you against you.

It's totally ingenius. Do you suppose I could pull it off before work tomorrow. So when I don't show up and my boss calls I can say "Do I know you?"