Category Archives: Stories

Lessons From An End Of The World Marketing Genius

Do You Really Know What You Are Getting Into?

I was hanging out downtown the other day, and ran into this particularly strange character. He was one of those guys that have the big signs warning of the impending end of the world. Sometimes his sign will say “The End is Near,” and or other similar messages. Sometimes though, his signs don’t make any sense whatsoever. Like the other day he had a sign that said “They are aware of all of what you think you don’t know,” which I had to read a couple times before I realized it really didn’t make any sense.

So naturally, being the curious guy that I am, I went and asked him. I was kind of half expecting him to be a complete nutcase, and give me some wild reason that masked his complete and utter detachment from reality. But what I got was something altogether different.

It was kind of like that time when I was a kid back in boy scouts. Our troop would go on these yearly hikes. They were about fifty miles, and took about a week. To make sure we were all up to snuff, we would have to go on three “qualifying” hikes prior to the big one. There would be five successive weekends where we would the troop would leave early Saturday morning, hike for eight or so miles, camp out, and then return on Sunday. You had to go on three of these five in order to go on the long one. The scoutmasters that went along didn’t want to be stuck carrying some kid’s stuff because he couldn’t carry it himself.

That had happened a couple years before. They didn’t have the three-trip rule, and just went straight away into the weeklong hike. There was this one kid that joined up, and his mom assured the scoutmaster that he would be able to handle it. After about two miles in, everybody realized this kid should be anywhere but on a hiking trail with a thirty-pound pack.

The scoutmasters divided up his stuff until his pack was maybe five pounds. Even then he struggled. Hiking up hills in high elevation where the air is thin is not the easiest thing in the world, and this kid was proof. His mom had unloaded this kid on the troop to take care of him for a week, and the adults all had to unload him of his stuff. And the rest of us kids had to pretend to be nice to him while we walked slower than normal so he wouldn’t be left behind. Talk about a burden.

I read this book once that was talking about business success. It said that the most successful people are one’s that are able to carry their own weight, as well as offering something to the organization. There is a certain winning combination. It gave several examples of different job interviews, and some of the answers people gave. Several of the unsuccessful candidates were keen to find out things about the job like vacation time, benefits, how often they can get raises, and so on. Managers naturally weren’t to anxious to hire these people.

Others on the other hand were a little too much in the opposite direction. They were about how good they were, how many massive skills they had, and why they should be hired. Managers didn’t really like these people because they didn’t really take much of an interest in the particular organization. They seemed to have a one size fits all ego that expected the world to bow down in awe of its skills.

The ones that were the most successful were the ones that were confident in their abilities, and were able to elicit certain aspects of the business, and then explain to the interviewer how their particular skills would be of specific benefit to the company.

The conclusion of this book was that if you are ever interviewing for jobs, to first make a list of some skills you have, and keep a mental list of several examples of how you demonstrated those skills in the past. Then when you are in the interview, find out what kind of person they are looking for, and then give examples from your own past that show you are an obvious choice for the organization. Obviously it helps to do a little bit of research before going to the interview, but with the amazing amount of information at your disposal through the Internet, that should be fairly easy.

The bottom line is to not only know your skills, but be able to find several examples from your past, and be able figure out as many creative ways as possible to show how they are applicable to as many situations as you can. This will get you a lot further than showing up with your proverbial hat in your hand asking about benefits and vacation time.

After we finally made it back after what seemed like the longest week in backpacking history, we never saw that kid again. He was quiet all the way back, and after a few polite and subdued goodbye’s that was that. I did see our head scoutmaster having a word with his mom. It didn’t appear to be an angry exchange, but he did seem to be explaining several things to her, and she appeared to be listening as though she had made some kind of a mistake. She kept nodding her head in what looked like sincere appreciation.

Perhaps she didn’t pawn him off to the troop after all. Maybe she just misunderstood what she was getting her son into. Many people don’t have a good idea of what they are getting themselves into. Which is exactly why the troop instituted the three qualifying hike rule to make sure everybody knows what’s coming when we went on the week long fifty mile hike.

I have to admit, thinking back to those fifty-mile hikes, I had some of the best times of my childhood. Fishing in pristine lakes, being in huge beautiful valleys surrounded by snow capped mountains without any other people in sight except for my friends and me. Seeing bears and deer and all kinds of other animals in their natural habitat is something you don’t ever forget.

It turned out this guy was doing marketing experiments for a church. There was a certain church in the area, whose name he made me promise I wouldn’t repeat. They were testing different marketing slogans. It was a rather big church, a non-denominational Christian church, and they were always trying to expand their members. They hired this guy from an advertising company, and would come up with different slogans for his message board, and simply note people’s reactions.

He would measure their reactions by how often they did double takes, if they slowed down when they passed him, or if they came up and talked to him. He told me that so far, the message that had a positive spin had the most effect on people, with messages of imminent world destruction coming in a close second.

So if the marquee messages at your local church alternate between peace and love, and threats of eternal hell bound damnation, now you know why.

A History Of Power Abuse By An Under Sea King

A Short History Of The Decline Of The Jellyfish Empire

Once upon a time there was a jellyfish king. He was a mean king, and ruled with an iron, jellyfish fist. Nobody was ever without a little bit of fear or anxiety. The jellyfish king was also fearful and anxious, as he was worried that somebody would sneak up behind him, conk him in the head the steal his throne, as he did to his predecessor, and his predecessor did to the jellyfish king before him.

Now there had long been a legend about the mysterious power of the monkey liver. Monkey livers were long thought to have special powers that would make jellyfish kings impossible to kill. Most jellyfish kings at some point had at least entertained the idea of finding the elusive monkey live and making the life protecting elixir from it.

Now, jellyfish live in the water, and since monkeys live on the land, they never really have come in contact with each other. Until this story. See in this story, the jellyfish king in question had a magic sea turtle working for him. How this particular sea turtle came about his magical powers is the subject of another blog post, so I won’t get into it too much here. Suffice it to say that this sea turtle had magical powers that would put Obi Won Kenobi to shame.

So the jellyfish king called upon the magical sea turtle to create magic “bubble” in which his two most trusted jellyfish spies to fit inside of in their quest for the monkey liver.

So the two jellyfish equipped themselves with the aura of water and off they went into the jungle. At first they were confused at what they saw. People had to either walk to fly, they couldn’t swim. And those that couldn’t fly were stuck to move in two-dimensional space. And those that could fly were restricted to certain flight paths and lengths. They always had to focus on where they were going, or they would crash into a tree or the side of a billboard or something.

But once they got used to it, they set off to find the mysterious monkey. They haven’t found a way to trick the monkey out of his liver. They were fairly sure that if they did find monkey, he would probably be still using his liver, and quite ready to part with it.

So finally they found a monkey. And after a few rounds of drinks the local monkey, the two jellyfish realized they were becoming fast friends with this monkey, because he was a lot like them. He had a job he didn’t like so much, a boss that was a pain in the neck, and not nearly enough vacation time every year.

And of course, the monkey as well as the two jellyfish spies didn’t get paid nearly enough money for their efforts at work. So after a few drinks, they finally spilled their guts. They told the monkey everything. That there was a secret undersea world that was ruled by an evil jellyfish king, who terrified and intimidated his subjects.

They instructed the monkey to never ever trust jellyfish (this was easy, because, after, these two jellyfish were spies, and were capable of quickly shifting their allegiances). They also told the monkey that they were bound by jellyfish duty to report their findings to the jellyfish kind, and he would keep sending spy after spy to try and steal the monkey liver.

They monkey thanked them, finished his whiskey, and went off to warn his monkey friends.

Little did they know they were being watched by another spy. The elder of the secret community of turtle wizards. Turtle wizardry goes further back than recorded history. And wizard turtles have long been infiltrating societies to make sure they behave according to the ancient code of undersea conduct.

The turtle wizard master summoned all of his friends, and met with the jellyfish spies just as they were reporting their findings to the jellyfish king. They did some turtle magic, and told the jellyfish that they were being punished for breaking the sea world, land world interface. And as punishment, they would be doomed to float in the ocean forever, at the whims of the current and tides. Since jellyfish had broken the rules and abused their power, they would not longer be able to choose their own destiny.

The turtles took away all the bones of the jellyfish. And to this day, jellyfish are forced to float around, with only skin and very weak muscle, and some kind of an endocrine system to help them along their way. And they are always bitter, always angry, which is why they developed their sting.

How He Lost His Bad Habit

Watch Out For Ducks Who Stare

Once upon a time there was a family of ducks. These were normal ducks; they didn’t have a deformed kid who later found out that he grew up in the wrong family, like in that other story. This was your normal, every day run of the mill duck family. They, like all other ducks, had their own collection of problems.

The father duck didn’t really like his boss very much, nor his job, but he realized that as an adult, a wife and three little ducklings, he couldn’t really afford to go back to school to get an advanced degree. His wife was supportive, she realized he wasn’t fulfilling his dream sin his job, and went to work every day largely out of familial obligations, for which she was grateful, and helped to ease his pain any way she could. She was all too aware of the growing problem of duck fathers leaving their families for more personally satisfying pursuits.

The kids were just as normal, not the smartest ducks in the class, but not the dumbest. Their grades were ok, and if they continued to proceed, they would likely get into decent duck college. But this is where things began to get a little strange for this seemingly normal duck family.

As it turns out, the youngest duck, which happened to be a boy, had a collection of special gifts that he had known about since elementary school, but kept to himself, for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of. These gifts were very strange, and at first he was very worried when he found out about them. But as time went on, and he learned to accept them, he grew more accustomed to them, and even enjoyed them.

One of his special talents was to impose a momentarily bout of amnesia on anybody that he focused his mind on. They would be in the middle of a sentence, and then suddenly pause, completely unsure of anything. For several seconds, they would develop a complete and utter blank for everything. They would forget who they were, where they were, what their names were, who the people were around them, and even how to speak. This usually lasted about five seconds, and then everything came flooding back.

This young duck would have great fun playing with his teachers and friends with this secret trick of his. He dared not tell his friends or family about it for fear of what might happen.

When he was younger, there was a young boy who lived up the street who developed some strange behaviors, and they came and took him away. And nobody ever saw him again. So this young duck was terribly afraid that once they figured out he had this gift, they would sneak up behind him, and steal him away to the insane asylum, from which nobody ever returned.

And then one day, the duck made a startling discovery. By focusing his mind strong enough, he was able to permanently erase another’s memory completely. He was very angry with another boy who teased him at school when he discovered this. He focused his energy with great anger, and they boy stopped talking, and sat down with a look of complete and utter bewilderment on his face. And he never recovered. They came and took him away, drooling and smiling vaguely. His parents, especially his mother, wailed uncontrollably, as he was their only child.

They would visit him in the special hospital, but he never did anything to acknowledge them. He just sat with a blank expression on his face, and drooled, and occasionally mumbled strange, incoherent words that nobody understood.

The thing that surprised the duck the most was that he actually felt pleasure when he thought of him, alone in his small room, drooling with a blank look on his face. He started to look forward to doing this to other people.

Pretty soon he would go downtown, where nobody would recognize him. He would choose people at random, and “melt their brain,” as he thought of it. He would feel immense pleasure at seeing somebody who was otherwise normal, walking through their daily life suddenly turn into a drooling, nonsense speaking burden on society. Once he did it to a taxi driver, who promptly crashed, killing all the people in his car.

Then one day the unthinkable happened. He was getting ready to melt he brain of an unsuspecting girl, whom he smiled at but didn’t return the smile, when he heard a voice in his head.

“We know who you are. And we know what you’ve been doing. If you don’t stop, you will suffer unimaginable pain and anguish. Do not doubt us.”

The young duck spun around, but nobody was looking at him. Nobody even looked as if they were trying to ignore him. He shook his head, wondering if he imagined it. He focused his concentration back on the girl, and readied himself to erase her brain.

“You did not imagine this.” The voice said.

“This is your last warning. If you even consider meddling with the thoughts of another, we assure you your consciousness will be transported forever to a world of torment and agony.”

The duck looked at the innocent girl again, who looked at him finally, and smiled.

How To Attract Customers To Any Shop

The other day I was walking down the street, minding my own business, like I usually do. Of course, I don’t always mind my own business, there’s times when you just can’t help but to involve yourself in the affairs of others. This almost always goes well, and people don’t generally object to me imposing on their situation, because it’s usually with a helpful comment of appreciation.

But in this particular case, I was just focusing on the thoughts that were in the forefront of my mind, which were rather jumbled, which made this a little more difficult than normal. Sometimes I have such clarity of thought and purpose that I go after and achieve my daily objection with incredible focus. This was not one of those days.

So there I was, staggering down the street, and suddenly I bumped into a rather festively dressed circus clown. He was doing an advertisement for some grand opening of a shop of some sort. When I happened across him, he was on his break, as he was sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette. I sat down, suddenly changing my plans to not involve myself in the business of others.

This was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss. I had never spoken to a circus clown before, especially one that was on his break taking drag after drag on an unfiltered cigarette.

I asked if he was always a clown, and he replied that most of the time, he was. He didn’t do kids parties, because those were too dangerous. He did mostly advertising, marketing gimmicks, and the occasional rodeo when they needed somebody to fill in. The particular job that he’d been assigned on that particular day was to simply stand outside a shop (which turned out to be a furniture store) and wave to customers to draw them inside the store.

Now there’s a couple of conversations I’d like to at least listen in on. One is the person who goes out, maybe to pick up his laundry, or drop off their kids at day care, or whatever. The last thing they want to do is buy some furniture. But lo and behold, there is this funny clown standing there on the sidewalk, and they can’t help but to go inside and see what’s what. And before they know it, they’ve purchased an entire dining room set.

The conversation I’d like to hear is when their friends come over, and ask them how or why they decided to buy a new set of furniture. I’d like to hear them explain that a voiceless cigarette-smoking clown convinced them.

The other conversation I’d like to hear is the furniture shop owners deciding how they were planning on promoting their grand opening, or sale, or whatever. And how exactly they decided on hiring a clown. Did they have three or four choices, and they clown was there best one? Personally, I’d choose a couple of bikini models, but that’s just me.

There was a story in the news a while back about a sandwich shop that had a bikini model, not even a real one, the kind that model clothes in department store windows, out front during lunch time. It was a fantastic success, and drew a large lunch crowed. Until somebody complained to the city council. It seems that having a bikini mannequin is against some city ordinance or something, so they had to put a t-shirt on her.

So maybe they wanted to put a couple of bikini models out front, but they got out-voted by the pro-clown faction of their marketing division, perhaps due to fears of repercussions from the community. Who knows?

When I asked Mr. Clown (I never did get his name) how long he’d been doing his, he said he was in his third year as a clown. He found out about it from an ad on craigslist. He didn’t tell me how much he got paid, but he did say that the benefits were pretty good. He got paid extra if he could juggle several balls at once.

So after a few minutes of pleasant conversation, I went on my way, sure I’d see the clown again somewhere.

How to Add Subscribers Through The Fog of History

When I was a kid I had a newspaper route, like a lot of kids did in my neighborhood. It wasn’t for a large newspaper; it was only for our local town newspaper. I think it was free, and they made money off the advertisements only, which were only for local businesses. It wasn’t a very large operation. They had an office downtown, with about five people working.

I’m not sure where they printed it, because the office was pretty small. Maybe they outsourced it somehow, and used some other printer, much like a lot of micro brewed beers use the facilities of larger breweries.

The route I had wasn’t that large; it only encompassed my own neighborhood. There were maybe fifty houses I would have to go to every week. It was only a weekly newspaper, so it wasn’t like I had to get up at four in the morning every day so I could have stories to tell my grandkids about how I used to have to get up in the morning to trudge through the snow eight hundred miles to school every day.

Every once in a while we would have a subscription drive. I’m not sure how that worked, being as how the newspaper was free, but I think they had two different levels of service, or something like that. People that paid to subscribe, rather than get the free version got some kind of benefit. Our boss explained it to us, but I wasn’t really sure I understood then, which means I’m almost certain I don’t understand now.

Something that is foggy and vague when it happens can only get foggier and more vague with the passage of time. Except for those that are capable of re-writing history, in which case the past can get clearer and clearer despite the events and the eye witness accounts getting further and further away.

I think that happens with some aspects of history. There is no way they really know what all those old times Greek scholars were really up to. There are all kinds of stories about what Socrates said before his death, and what his intentions were and all that. But they didn’t have any video cameras back then, so I doubt anything that is attributed to him is any way remotely accurate.

When you think about how events from the distant past have been squeezed and distorted through the lens’ of various cultures throughout history, it’s amazing that we even remember their names, let alone their intentions and the social pressures of the day that influenced them and there decisions.

Kind of like that telephone game. Where you get a bunch of kids in a large circle. And you whisper something in the ear of one, and he or she whispers it to the kid next to them, and so on. You may start with something like “I like red fire engines,” and end up with something like “Let’s go to Nigeria.” Which of course is always good for a laugh (playing the game, not going to Nigeria, but then again, I’ve never been to Nigeria, so I wouldn’t know. I imagine it’s pretty hot.)

So what we would do is we would knock on peoples doors, and say:

“You really need to subscribe to this,”

To which people would usually say something like,

“Why do I need to subscribe, I get it for free already,”

To which we would say,

“Yea, I know but when you subscribe, you get all kinds of extra stuff,”

And then they would say something like,

“What kind of extra stuff?”

And we would explain, and they would quickly realize that by subscribing you get all kinds of wonderful benefits, such as extra stuff, and secret stuff, and other go straight to the front of the line kind of stuff. Which is pretty cool, if you ask me.

The Crow Massacre

Once upon a time there was a group of crows. They were numerous, and had been established in their community for quite a while. They had a fairly well developed relationship with the surrounding farmers. They would refrain from picking the crops while they were growing, and hunt for food elsewhere. The when harvest time came, they were allowed to pick up all they could eat so long as they didn’t interfere with the harvesting process.

In turn for their cooperation, the farmers agreed not to shoot the crows for sport while they were getting close to harvest time. Crows are very easily hypnotized, and when the season is getting close to harvest time, there is something in the air that transfixed the crows. They begin to gather in mass hordes just outside the crops and wait for the harvest. This makes them easy targets for farmers with shotguns.

Once in early fall, before this rule had been established, several farmers, decided after a night of heavy drinking to have some fun with the waiting crows. They loaded up their shotguns and went out one night, and had a contest to see who could kill the most crows.

What happened after was disastrous. Very few people recalled exactly what had happened, but they all agreed that it was so horrible they should never repeat it. After several rounds of negotiations, they agreed that the crows would be protected during their hypnotic waiting for the harvest, and they would restrain themselves during their furious scavenging after the harvest.

This went on for several generations. The crows would hunt for squirrels and small rodents, and they could steer clear of the farmer’s crops. Then the weeks leading up to the harvest, the crows would slowly gather and watch, transfixed as the farmers prepared their instruments of harvest. The farmers learned to regard the gathering crows with a detached disinterest, not unlike a stronger predator barely acknowledging a lesser animal, waiting in the background for scraps.

Then one day disaster struck. There was a solar eclipse, which sent down a strange combination of solar radiation, and the strange feeling of night during the day. And few people know that the feeling of night during the day is one thing that can send the crows from a lazy feeling of desire into a ravenous blood lust for flesh.

Which is exactly what happened. Nobody knows why, but the solar eclipse was not predicted by any meteorologist, nor written about the much relied upon farmers almanac. It came completely without warning. It didn’t help matters that the frequency of the accompanying solar radiation was similar to that of the brainwave frequency of the crows.

What happened next was unimaginable. Crows swept down upon the harvesting farmers as one, instinctively plucking out there eyes, creating immediate and deadly fear and panic. With the farmers suddenly running around in a chaotic frenzy, the crows began plucking at their throats with almost surgical precision, ripping open carotid artery after carotid artery. Soon all fields were running with the blood of the slowly dying blind farmers.

When all the farmers were dead, the crows turned on each other. Before long, crows and farmer alike lay in the yet to be harvested fields, dead.

It took several days for the neighboring communities to realize there was a problem, as they weren’t expecting any harvested corn or wheat for some time. By the time a delivery truck happened through the community, the site was completely void of life.

No one has ever been to those fields since.

Revenge of the Rabbits

Once upon a time there was a small village filled with people that had been there for many many years. They were a strange people, and they hadn’t reproduced in over three generations, making the idea of a generation kind of redundant, if you can follow my logic.

Anyway, one afternoon the town mayor was out for a stroll, and he noticed three rabbits chatting. He got close enough to hear what they were saying without scaring them off. He was astonished to learn the heated topic of their conversation.

They were arguing when they should launch their assault of the small village. It turns out that the villagers had been throwing away their garbage for several years behind the old chestnut tree, without much thought to the consequences.

As it turns out, the garbage had begun seeping down into the ground, which fed the carrot patch, which was the rabbit’s main source of food. The rabbits at first tried to discuss what to do, and they initially decided to be peaceful, and send an emissary to the villagers to explain their situation.

This didn’t quite work out as planned, as the group of representatives from the rabbit community were summarily killed and eaten by the villagers.

This of course, enraged the rabbit community, which led to the current situation.

When our hero returned back to town to report the news, nobody believed him. Nobody believed that rabbits could talk, let alone develop long ranged plans based on agricultural concerns. Our hero was run out of town.

The townspeople were surprised at the first wave of the rabbit attack. Surprised, and wholly unprepared. The rabbits inflicted considerable casualties, and burned over half of the town.

That was just the beginning. The second wave of attack was even more brutal. The rabbits viscously killed whoever hadn’t fled. And those that did flee, the rabbits had set up a trap that caught them as well.

It only took three days before the rabbit had killed and consumed the entire village. And after they cleaned up the garbage dump behind the chestnut tree, they lived happily every after.

Beware of GPS Systems That Lead You Astray

Once upon a time, there was this guy. He was a normal, every day guy, and the kind you usually run into in the grocery store, or at the cleaners picking up your shirts. The kind of guy who you see on a regular basis, but if you saw him outside of the usual places, like say if you saw him at the ice skating rink, you wouldn’t likely get anything other than a vague, “that guy looks familiar” feeling.

That was the kind of guy that this guy was. He had a decent job, he made decent money, and he lived in a decent neighborhood, in a decent apartment. He dated some decent girls, and most of his dates went pretty decently, meaning that he never got to second base.

If you are wondering where I’m going with this, that only means that you are starting to find this interesting, and perhaps a little upsetting at the same time, the reasons of which shall likely be explained soon.

So anyways, something very peculiar happened to this guy. He had one of those GPS navigators in his car. It didn’t come factory installed; he had it put in after the fact. Of course, he was smart enough to know that you should never get something like that done at the dealership, because everybody knows they charge way too much for things like that.

Anyways, he really liked the sound of the voice on his GPS. She always sounded so soothing, and so comforting. Warning him of upcoming on ramps and off ramps. He would sometimes drive by himself and pretend that he had a woman with him in the car.

But that’s when the creepy stuff started happening. Pretty soon he noticed that his navigation system was taking him on longer and more roundabout ways to get to where he wanted to go. At first he thought it was just a glitch in the software, but it kept happening with more and more consistency.

Pretty soon, his GPS was leading him way out in the boonies where he’d never been before. Every time he tried switching off his GPS, she would politely ask him not to do it. It was as if she was starting to read his mind.

Pretty soon he just gave up. He listened to her, and went where she told him, without question. And the more he obeyed her, the further and further she took him from his destination. Sometimes he would end up completely lost, and became completely dependent on her to take him back home.

Because he was late several times for work, he quickly lost his job. And with his job gone, he lost his apartment, as he couldn’t afford the rent. All he did was drive around and listen to her sweet, soothing voice take him wherever she thought he should go. And he obeyed unquestioningly.

Pretty soon he was receiving messages from her on how to get loose change, and a few odd dollars here and there so he could pay for gas, and some food. Because he was living in his car, he began to listen to her direction twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Pretty soon he felt completely alone and vulnerable every time he left his car.

People would see him standing on the side of the road, mumbling incoherently as he got out of his car. He would wander off into the city, and come back with enough money to buy another weeks worth of gas and food. Then he would climb back in his car, and she would tell him where to drive, so that they could be alone together.

Everything was fun until he got pulled over. It seemed that either he or she (whatever she was) neglected to renew his registration. Normally, this would have been a regular stop, with a warning from the police officer to renew his registration.

But because he hadn’t shaved or showered in several days, he was more than a little suspicious to the police. When he mumbled completely incomprehensibly to the police, they asked him to step out of his car. When he started asking his car for permission, they knew something was wrong.

Naturally, they took him in for questioning, and because of his completely deranged description of how he came to be like he was, they deemed him a menace to himself and to society. They locked him up in the psychiatric ward, where he remains to this very day.

His car, however, is another story. When they interrogated him, he said some interesting things which made the police want to search his car further. When they went out to the impound yard, the car was gone.

And they haven’t found it since.

The Chipmunks And The Winter Goddess

Once upon a time, there were some friends. They lived in the forest, and they had a fairly easy life. They were all chipmunks, and because they were chipmunks they were very aware of the effect that the cycle of the seasons had on their lives. They couldn’t just go down to the supermarket whenever they wanted to get some food. They had to rely on what nature provided.

But they also had to rely on their ability to predict the times when nature wouldn’t provide, so they would be ok. They were all very good about watching each other and checking different temperature patterns so they would know when it was time to start saving a little bit of what they collected.

Normally, during times of good weather, they didn’t really have to worry about what they collected. They just collected, and ate what they collected, whenever they felt like it. It was always a little bit of sad time for them on the day when they realized that winter was coming. On that day, they had to start saving a little bit of what they collected for later. They were sad because they couldn’t devote their minds to only playing; they had to think a little bit about the future.

Of course when they were young, their parents had to practically force them to start saving when the time came. Because they were young and inexperienced, they never really understood the significance of the coming winter.

But as they transitioned to young adulthood, they started to recognize the importance of having to save. Each of their parents was very good about making sure they experienced enough worry during winter to remember to collect for the next year. Not enough worry to cause them any emotional harm, but just enough to make them aware of the importance of saving.

Some of their friends didn’t have it so easy. Their parents were selfish, and didn’t want to share any of their worry. They kept it all to themselves. They thought they were being good parents by always providing for their kids, without allowing them the luxury of learning how to provide for themselves.

When they grew up, and these young chipmunks had to leave their parents and live on their own, some of them were very unprepared to handle the changes of the weather on their own. And sadly, some of these didn’t make it.

Which is why every year, even thought they were sad their playtime was over, they were glad they had developed the skills to shift from pure play in to only partial play and partial work. Sometimes, they were excited when winter came, because just thinking of all the resources they’d saved up made them feel very proud of themselves, and confident in their ability to handle the changing seasons.

They had fully understood and appreciated the gift of worry, but only if you listen to it, and take steps to make sure what you are worried about doesn’t happen. When you do that, worry can turn into the powerful confidence of self-sufficiency.

The Tulip Save

Once upon a time there was a family. They were a normal, modern family with normal, modern family problems. They had two kids, and the father worked as an account executive in a large advertising firm. Because of the recent economic problems, the father’s company was experiencing problems, and so his company wasn’t paying out big bonuses like they normally did. When the father joined the company several years a go, he opted for payment plan B. Which at the time was great. Only now it wasn’t so great, because a large part of his salary was based on bonuses.

So of course the family was struggling. The wife had a small flower stand that she worked several days a week. It wasn’t a full-blown shop; it was just big enough to store a few dozen different flowers to catch the attention of people as they drove by to and from work. You know how when you are just going along and minding your own business, and then you see something that captures your interest, and you think to yourself you have to take a look at this? It was like that. It was more of a hobby than anything else. She just made enough to pay her rent and the expenses. She never really had any expectations of making a living selling flowers. Which was fine with her, because she enjoyed raising her children and making sure they did well in school and stayed out of trouble.

She was also fairly lucky in that her grandfather had owned a large farm. Her grandfather had passed away several years ago, and they had inherited the land. Because the family wasn’t very interested in continuing the farm, they let the land go. It was only a couple acres just on the outside of town. Fortunately, the land produced many wildflowers that she sold in her shop. Her shop was known around town as a shop that sold wildflowers and other things like that. The kind of people that shopped there were a unique brand of people. They usually bought flowers for other than main flower buying reasons. Usually just to give to somebody for some spontaneous reason, and not a rose for Valentines Day or any other socially required gift.

But then one summer, the flowers on her farm started changing. They were only wildflowers, and they grew naturally, so she really had no idea what was happening. She had a friend who knew about these things and they investigated for her, and determined that there was a particular strain of a plant disease that had infected her flowers. Her source of her hobby was at risk.

She went home, and was surprised how depressed this had made her. She had always thought of selling flowers as nothing more than a hobby, so she never really gave it much thought to how it affected her personally. But when her hobby was threatened, she noticed how much pleasure she received when she sold somebody a flower, who in turn was going to give it to somebody else. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

When she arrived home, she was in for another shock. Her husbands company had decided to discontinue their bonus plan altogether. And despite efforts to reorganize the pay structure so it wouldn’t be so bad, the family was going to take substantial financial hit. The kids had just entered high school, and they were not completely unsure of their futures. They all sat up late at night after dinner, discussing how they could handle the impending financial crisis. Nobody could come up with an idea that didn’t involve them selling their nice house and moving into a cheaper one, and having to choose a less expensive college for the kids.

The next day at work, something incredibly fortuitous happened. A stranger came up to the flower shop, and brought some flowers that the woman had never seen before. They were beautiful, with a swirl of colors she never thought was possible outside of a painter’s studio. The man was just curious, as he had picked them on a drive in from outside of town. When he saw the shop, he’d decided to ask her about them, merely out of curiosity. She was amazed when he told her where he’d picked them.

When she arrived at her grandfather’s farm, with her friend, they saw hundreds of flowers just like the stranger had brought in. The “disease” had somehow changed the flowers into the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. She gathered a couple dozen, and brought them back to her shop. They sold out within an hour, and the news of the unique flowers quickly spread. They repeated this, until fully half the wildflowers from her grandfathers farm had been sold. Her friend determined an easy way to repeatedly grow the same flowers, with the same colors. Pretty soon people were driving hours from all over to buy these strangely colored flowers. She made more money selling flowers than she’d ever thought possible.

Experts from a nearby University came to test the soil of her grandfathers farm, and said it was a unique blend of minerals they’d never thought about before, that might potentially have limitless medical applications. They government leased her grandfathers property from her, in a hundred year lease, for an enormous price. Her husband was able to quit his job, and help her in the flower shop. Because of the income from the government lease, they never had to worry about money again.

Something that they had that they thought was only a source for a passing hobby turned into a magnificent source of income for a lifetime, for reasons they never would have expected.