Why didn't I think of that?

There have been two notable occasions in my life when I thought I had come up with a revolutionary, unique idea.

The first time was when I named my most favoritest stuffed animal. It was a stuffed beagle with a red sock hanging out of his mouth, and I received him at one of my early single-digit, family birthday parties. I looked into his marble eyes, and they looked so yellow and sparkly that I decided to name him "Sparki" (with an "i" because that was very "in" at the time). I declared this to my aunts, uncles, and cousins, who laughed at me. One even said, "oh that's original!" I couldn't trace down who had said it, and stared into the crowd awaiting an explanation. It was then that I found out approximately 85% of dogs are named "Sparky." Well, damnit.

Second, I discovered that in a very old journal of mine, there was the idea for a pen with multiple colors of ink. There was even a diagram:
Obviously, there is no way that this would work. The inks would run into each other and then onto your fingers as they spilled, unchecked, "down the shoot" of the pen. I, however, really thought that this was a great idea at the time.

I found out shortly after sketching out this idea, though, that some genius at Bic had thought of the "pen with multi-color ink" long before I had. In fact, someone even came up with pens with scented ink. (This one either smells like limes or dong, I'm not sure). Either way, whoever thought of the scented pen is set for life. Why didn't I think of that? Instead of being unemployed right now, I would be retired.