My wife, Ellen, describes our relationship as very similar to Bert and Ernie’s. And she’s absolutely right.
I’m Bert. While I have never considered collecting bottlecaps or becoming a pigeon fancier, I do have a rather large collection of Nixon political buttons and own two pet rats. Like Bert, I am also a fussbudget who likes things to be in their proper place.
Another similarity: Bert is the kind of guy who, without Ernie by his side, would live the life of a hermit, emerging from his house only to buy food and confiscate the Frisbees that accidentally land on his lawn. His death would be noticed only after the neighbors started to complain about the smell. Without Ellen, I could see myself moving in this direction. I wouldn’t necessarily be happy about it, but is seems like something I might do if left to my own devices.
Ellen is Ernie. She’s disorganized, peppy, sociable, friendly, and has an easy laugh. Also, she, like her Muppet alter ego, takes giddy delight in getting her Bert’s goat.
Look! Bert even likes goats! If Bert was real, he and I would be best friends!
But when night falls, things change. After the lights are turned off and the house becomes quiet, Ellen and I experience a sort of role reversal. Night is when the silly ideas start to fill my brain and I, like Ernie, have an insatiable desire to share.
“Ellen,” I whisper. “Are you asleep?”
“Mm,” she replies into her pillow.
“I just made up parody lyrics to the song ‘The Candy Man.’ The song from the Willy Wonka movie. The lousy one with Gene Wilder.”
“Don’t.”
“The Pickle Man.”
“Stop right there!”
But I have a song in my heart, so I sing: “Who can make the sun shiiiine, with cucumbers and briiiiine…”
Or I might want to discuss why Act II of The Music Man isn’t nearly as good as Act I. Or quote extensively from Wallace and Gromit. Or think up some titles for the most inappropriate children’s book ever. (My personal favorite: The Sluttiest Mennonite.)
Ellen, like Bert, is less than thrilled by all of this.
“I will kill you,” she says.
From left, Mike and Ellen.
I also come up with ideas that I can use, too. Good ones. My best ones. I share those, too.
I don’t mean to be a pest, it’s just when I lie there in the dark, my mind becomes so very fertile. This is why I love quiet moments. This is why, during the day, I become Bert the loner. And it is also why, at night, I come dangerously close to becoming Ernie the murder victim.
So! Let’s open up the comments section. Here’s a prompt:Which Muppet is your alter ego?
When I’m not promoting the historical dynamo that is Sarah Josepha Hale (My children’s book comes out on September 1, by the way!) or working on a story ideas about the disgusting habits of Fluff Monkeys, I get paid to edit an alumni magazine. It’s a wonderful job where I get to interview a number of fascinating people who have great stories to tell.
I also interview teenagers, and, well, that’s sometimes a different story. It’s not that the kids aren’t smart or have nothing interesting to tell me – they are and they do. The problem is that some of them don’t yet know how to answer questions about themselves. Even the most casual interview environments make them uncomfortable.
This discomfort often manifests itself in one of two distinctly teenage ways:
1. The teen (a girl, usually) goes on a caffeinated ramble, filling the briefest of silences with lots and lots of words. Any words will do, really.
2. The teen (a boy, obviously) grunts to say “yes.” Or maybe the grunt was a “no.” Maybe it’s a “maybe?” Or maybe it wasn’t a grunt at all; maybe Mr. Teen just has gas.
All teens I speak with aren’t this way, of course, many really do shine in an interview. But I’ve encountered the above types often enough to wish that I had some kind of crystal ball to get inside their heads and pull out what I need.
Fortunately, I have one!
I first decided to get a Magic 8 Ball after watching an episode of Friends and noticing that Chandler had one on his office desk. I’m not a huge fan of either Friends or Chandler, but I loved the idea of having an 8 Ball of my own. I had one when I was a kid, but in my tweens I purged it with my other toys. I was under the impression that a toy-less room would make me more of an adult; instead it just made me a sullen teen with an un-fun room.
My plan was to keep the 8 Ball on my desk at work and, whenever one of my colleagues suggested an idea for a magazine story, I would consult it by asking, “Is that idea stupid, or what?”
Fun fact: the thingamabob that predicts the future is a 20-sided die with 10 positive responses, five negative responses, and five vague “ask me later, I’m sleepy”-style responses. So if you think an idea is stupid, the odds are pretty good that the 8 Ball will agree with you.
My antics with the 8 Ball were good for a few laughs. Soon thereafter it became part of the landscape, just another thing on my desk.
Little did I know that my 8 Ball would soon be important tool of the trade. This epiphany came less than a week after I brought it to work.
I had to interview a senior who conveyed all the signs of the Type One teen I mentioned above. She was blathering before she could even finish wrestling her book bag through my office door. She told me that she was having a crazy day and she was tired because there’s a test coming up and she’s nervous about it and she would very much like to check her email if it was okay with me and it would only take a second and she’s so sorry that she’s late and keeping me waiting this way and blah and the blah blah blah and blah.
While this little train wreck was playing itself out, she sat herself down in the chair next to my desk and started to play with the 8 Ball, shaking it with vigor and peering into the viewfinder.
I interrupted her. “What did you ask it?”
This stopped her monologue cold. “Ask what?”
“The ball.”
“Oh” she looked at the ball in her hands as if for the first time. “Nothing. I was just…” And then she trailed off. I could tell her answer was honest. She grabbed the ball just to do something with her hands.
“Nothing?” I sputtered. “I hope you realize that you are holding in your hands a powerful piece of black magic. You don’t hold a Magic 8 Ball and ask it nothing. It is not done. You gotta ask it something or it will get annoyed.” (And yes, I really said this. My tone suggested I was joking and not crazy. It’s the same tone I use on my six-year-old son when I want him to get into a giggle fit.)
With only a little more cajoling, I got her to ask the 8 Ball a question.
“You have to say it out loud,” I explained. “It needs to hear you.”
“Oh,” she said. She paused and asked, “Did I get into Brown?”
The ball replied with a “Most Likely,” and this report actually relieved her. We talked about Brown and about what made the university so important her. Then we talked about that test and what she was up to these days and yada yada yada. The formal setting of the office was not as intimidating as it was a few minutes before. We were just having a friendly chat. A friendly chat where I was taking notes.
When she began to slip back into her old conversational habits, I reintroduced the 8 Ball, which forced her to focus her mind on a specific, single idea. Then the 8 Ball forced her to sit still and wait for an answer to the question she asked.
I interviewed that young woman several years ago. At the time I had about 10 years of professional interviewing experience under my belt. In other words, I knew how extract information from people. But I had never, ever, seen anything like this before.
It was, well, magical.
On this blog I like to write about a lot of different things. But I always make an effort to keep all of my posts thematically linked under the common umbrella of “Creative Thinking.”
Creative thinking can come in many forms. Sometimes getting your mind to work in a new and innovative way takes a great deal of conscious effort. Other times a great idea comes by way of a happy accident. My Magic 8 Ball was one such happy accident.
Could it have been my happiest accident? I’m not sure. But according to one inside source, “All Signs Point to ‘Yes.’”
If you’re one of those charming, organized folks who prefers to read “Part Ones” before “Part Twos,” have no fear. My first burro post is right here. Enjoy!
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My wife, Ellen, thinks she is The Burro Whisperer. She came to this conclusion largely because of Burrito, a denizen of an area petting zoo, who trots over to her every time she shows up and grunts with delight when she pets his nose.
Need more evidence? Fine. She also sleeps with a stuffed Eeyore. Case closed.
The problem with Ellen’s reasoning is that Burrito will trot over to anyone for nose pets and, well, Eeyore is a doll.
But that’s neither here nor there. When we visit burros that are not Burrito, Ellen (who, it should be said, is smarter than me on most other matters) has a difficult time grasping that all burros are not exactly the same.
This was brought into focus on a recent trip to Intercourse, Pennsylvania (which is just one of the many towns in Lancaster County with a sort-of-pervy name), at a place called Kitchen Kettle Village (which is a tourist shopping Mecca that sells everything you could ever possibly want – provided that everything you want is jam).
Kitchen Kettle Village also has a tiny petting zoo that no one ever visits. Petting animals, I guess, distracts from all of that jam-buying.
I kid you not.
The zoo has a burro, so Ellen was on cloud nine. She leaned over the fence to get his attention. She “hello-ed” and knocked on the split rail fence posts.
Mr. Burro, however, wanted none of this. He sat in the center of his pen and made a pretty good show of ignoring her. He positioned his ample burro butt in her direction and stared at a wall. The only thing he could’ve done to make his wishes more obvious was to bury his nose behind a newspaper.
Ellen, however, wasn’t getting the message. She redoubled her efforts, knocking louder and faster and switching from “hellos” to more urgent “yoo-hoos.” Alex, our six-year-old, and I were too busy introducing ourselves to a group of personable goats to notice what Ellen was doing at first, but her doggedness soon became hard to ignore.
Alex played the role of diplomat. “Momma,” he said. “I don’t think he wants to be pet.”
I was less diplomatic. “Geeze, Ellen. Knock it off. Can’t you see he wants to be left alone?”
But then, as if to prove me wrong, Mr. Burro stood up, stretched a moment, and sauntered toward her.
Ellen was flush with triumph. She shot me a look. I was familiar with this look. It was a look that said, “See? You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. As usual. But go ahead and keep talking. No, no, go ahead. I’m listening. I’ll listen while I pet this burro that doesn’t want to be pet.”
The burro approached the fence. He batted his eyelashes. Ellen was smitten. It looked like they were going to be fast friends.
Then, as Ellen reached into the pen to pet his nose, Mr. Burro lunged out in an attempt to bite hers off.
I’m pleased to report that Ellen has good reflexes. She lurched away just in time and her nose is where it’s always been. Which is good, to say the least.
You shoulda seen the look on your face when I tried to bite ya. Wooo!
What’s also good is that, for the second time in my life, a burro had gotten my creative juices flowing. After a lot of laughs and almost as many rewrites, this past week I sent out a new (Ellen-approved) picture book manuscript that is “inspired by actual events.” Momma No-Nose is the touching story of a mother who, with the help of an artistic son and a Play-Doh proboscis, learns to live life again after a startling petting zoo assault.
There are two lessons to be taken from this story, I think. The first is don’t pester the burros; when their dander is up they can be ruthless killing machines.
The second and far more important lesson is, inspiration is everywhere. So go out and get some!
Do you have an inspiration story you’d like to share? Then write me a comment! I do so love your comments.
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Oh, and if you’re one of those devil-may-care nonconformist folks who prefers to read “Part Twos” before “Part Ones,” you’re in luck. My first burro post is right here. Enjoy!
Hey, Look! A Writer Fellow! 