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The What If Game

The “What If…” game has been around a long time. For writers, it’s one of the most highly valuable tools for creating the next great novel or the next fantastic screenplay. For children, it’s a sure way to expand the imagination and explore the world as it might be rather than how it is.

For anyone who wants to deconstruct a novel, the “What If…” game is an interesting way to discover the possible seeds of how the novel was begun. How did it grow from the writer’s mind? Let’s try a few books made into movies and see.

What If…video games were really only military training? (Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card)

What If…an old fisherman finally got the catch he always wanted but the whole ocean was against him? (The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway)

What If…a corporation held the key to triggering all your memories? (from the short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick—which became Total Recall in the movies)

I picked the above because they were apparently influential enough as books to be made into movies. Here are a few more. Only this time, I’ll put the What If out there and you try to guess the book made into a movie.

1. What If…someone in the South actually wrote about and stood up for the African Americans who were in low-paying service jobs?

2. What If…a love story had pirates and sword fighting and giants and six-fingered men in it?

3. What If…there was a magical item so powerful it could rule the world and someone decided to throw it in a volcano?

Did you make some guesses? Were they too easy? Too hard? Regardless of whether the sources were obvious or not, the game is effective, right? You can break down any book or movie this way, then go about making your own. Here are the answers to the three above:

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

And what about these classics?

What If…a child survived an evil curse and grew up to battle the one who tried to curse him? (Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling)

What If…some super intelligent children were formed into a team to battle a super intelligent bad guy who was trying to prove his superiority by making everyone in the world wear berets? (The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart)

What If…there was a visual example of the events during the time of Moses? (The Ten Commandments by Cecil B. DeMille based on the historical record of the Bible)

That last one is a funny one, because it is definitely the book with the most movies made about it.

It—the Bible—is the book with the most short films made about it, the most cartoons, and even some crazy digitally animated vegetables (Veggie Tales). A lot of these are great to watch around Easter.

Admittedly, since it’s a book of books, the Bible has a lot of subject material. There’s a lot there to break down into “What If…” games.

Recently too, there’s The Chosen, which is breaking all the rules of what cinema can be. It’s ruling the viewing public’s time, for sure. Did the makers of The Chosen start with speculation? Did they say, “What if we tried to cinematize the whole New Testament?” Or did they say, “What if people could view the Savior’s life in its entirety, or at least as much as we know about it?”

However Dallas Jenkins, the director of The Chosen, envisioned his product, he has successfully brought the history to the people. What if you could do the same with your stories?

In The Book Drop

Libraries are fascinating places. You can get a Master’s Degree by checking out books from the public library. You can check out items like telescopes and cameras and tablets. You can use the printers, 3D printers, copy machines, and computers. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the library might have a fish tank. You can stare at the fishies between print jobs.

Not long ago I found out the librarians keep a list of things that pass through the book drop or get left in books as bookmarks. A fair amount of the items are funny. A few are stupidly dangerous. The rest are downright bizarre.

It’s not too strange to find all kinds of playing cards. From the King of Hearts to Uno Reverse cards, from Pokemon to Magic, those seem to make a little bit of sense. Of course the joke, “They’re not playing with a full deck,” is funny here, but even more appropriate for the people who use their credit cards as bookmarks, especially if they leave the credit card in the book when they return it.

It’s equally tempting to laugh at whoever left their concert tickets in a book—before the concert even happened. Then again, maybe you just feel sorry for that person. Possibly maybe you go back and forth between mockery and pity, sort of undecided, like the person who left raw bacon in a cookbook.

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If you ever find out where you land in that cycle, try these: there are people who leave cash as bookmarks, or prescription notes, or gambling chips. Do you have pity, or do you want to laugh in their faces?

At times, people will leave things which seem not only out of the ordinary but also kind of valuable. A bead bracelet? A necktie? A yo-yo? Dentures? Yes, indeed, dentures have been dropped in the book drop. Or were they launched into the book drop? By cough, perhaps?

Librarians have also found things that are worth nothing in the book drop. Things like hair bands, toothpicks, socks (not in pairs), Post-It Notes, gum wrappers, Capri-Sun straws, corn chips and potato chips, and well, bookmarks. They get thousands of bookmarks every year. Librarians are able to look up who checked out a book last, but they aren’t able to do it for every book that gets returned. Sadly, they have to throw away the majority of the bookmarks they get, no matter if it was personalized, no matter if it was your favorite or not. They can’t keep all of them.

The book drop is a magnet for stupidity. People put all kinds of things that don’t belong in the book drop. Things like toys, onions, rocks, reading glasses, and sunglasses end up in the book drop. According to the news, someone once put a live chicken in the book drop. Of course they were easily located since there are security cameras everywhere these days. Once they were located, they were arrested. They probably thought they were being funny, but animal cruelty isn’t funny. Neither is it funny for the poor librarian, or more likely the part-time assistant, who found the chicken.

Even though it may not be cool for the person who had to clean it up, I do think the fact that someone put a sandwich in the book drop is kind of funny. I can just imagine them placing the sandwich on the car seat next to the books, fully anticipating lunchtime and the devouring of the sandwich. They go to the library to return the books, then head off to their favorite lunch spot, only to find an empty seat. They start looking all around. They look under the seat. They check the glove box. They check their pockets. “Now, where did I leave that sandwich?”

Meanwhile, back at the library, regardless of whether the sandwich was wrapped or not, the person retrieving books that day has to throw the sandwich in the trash. No one gets to eat it.

Mind what you put in the book drop.

Matty Active

I hinted at this guy’s YouTube channel recently, so I thought I’d give him the full endorsement this time.

His channel is called Matty Active and it sounds like he started his athletic career as a baseball player. Now he’s doing mountain biking videos and being honest about his experiences.

Pause there, because that’s what I love about his approach, his honesty. He doesn’t smooth over his feelings of inadequacy. Matty tells you exactly how he feels. He tells the whole world how he “wasn’t sure” or “didn’t expect” or even “wasn’t ready to race”. It makes me trust him when he’s that honest. There are many YouTuber mountain bikers out there who will tell you they’re the best and then they’ll show you their highlight reels. This guy, Matty, doesn’t do that.

He is hyped up on finding new and different bike configurations, like in the video above in which he tries a gravel bike. He shows you his test rides, not only in this video, but his other ones as well. He shows you when he goofs and has to try a feature again. He even lets you know when he doesn’t like something.

Matty Active has a good attitude, which one commenter called “infectious”. I wholeheartedly agree. He seems like the kind of guy everybody would want to ride with because he’s so positive all the time.

Ultimately, with any sport, that’s the bottom line, right? If you’re not having a positive experience, if you’re not having fun, then why play? Go do something else.

And the bottom line, the grand total, for Matty Active, is that I enjoy hearing his view on the sport I love, so I will continue watching his channel.

Finger Food Friday

You already know about Taco Tuesday. It may be one of your top ten days of the week.

Have you heard of Finger Food Friday?

Some of the most fabulous foods are finger foods. Carrot sticks, celery sticks, and apple slices all qualify. Yes, the whole gamut of veggie trays can be the main course on Finger Food Friday.

Sweet peas in the pod, delicious florets of broccoli, and festive lunchbox peppers fit nicely between two fingers—or three if you’re only snacking. If you’re a wee tot, you can grip them in your fist (fist food?).

A veggie plate might include tiny bleached brains of cauliflower, itty bitty baby carrots, and temptingly launchable cherry tomatoes. Yet another might have a perfect pile of black olives (or maybe green), discs of cucumber, crisp okra, bits of mango, and tart cranberries. Then we’re getting into fruit trays instead of veggie trays.

You know what fruit trays have, of course, like oranges, bananas, melon chunks, grapes, cherries, and don’t forget the passion fruit. Lemon and lime slices are occasionally featured. Even things that are not very grabbable can be sliced or diced and stabbed onto a toothpick, like cubed pineapple or sliced jalapeños.

Ha! Now it’s getting really exotic, so throw together some cheese and crackers and you’ve got a cheese and crackers plate.

Don’t stop there. Some people prefer a shrimp platter, or a keto platter, or a vegetarian platter, or a protein platter, or a boiled egg and summer sausage platter. Still others are going to want chicken nuggets and French fries. There are so many ways to do Finger Food Friday.

Last, don’t be afraid to notice that a lot of these finger foods are served with one dip or another. No one wants to celebrate Dipping Sauce Friday though. It just wouldn’t be as fun as Finger Food Friday.

Awkward Constructions

One of the craziest ways people try to show off their wisdom is by creating a phrase that contains two ideas with the second idea being only a reversal of the first. Here’s an example:

“It’s not your eye that hurts, it’s your hurt you’re eyeing.”

This is not a terrible sentence. It’s an awkward, illogical, nonsensical, bland, trite, ridiculous, and annoying sentence. (Read that in the voice of the most ornery, crotchety old man voice you can imagine.) The person is supposedly trying to say your eye doesn’t hurt, but if it does, it’s only because you’re focusing on the pain. Doesn’t that require there to be pain in the first place? Then where does the hurt come from, I wonder. Anyway, the general idea reminds me of the old, hilarious dad joke of saying, “I can make you forget about your hurt eye,” and then dear, ol’ dad kicks you in the shin. If he was a doctor, you’d take him to court.

Malpractice.

Which reminds me of malapropisms, though these are not malapropisms, these idea reversals. For one thing, malapropisms catch our attention because they’re funny. A funny mix-up. Using one word which sounds like another in the wrong context. Like when Uncle Fred describes when he was abducted by aliens and he can’t quite spit it out.

“That was the night they took me aboard the murder ship, er, the murther ship. No, no, no, the MOTHER ship.”

Malapropisms are fun, but idea reversals are not. A better way to say this:

“It’s not your eye that hurts, it’s your hurt you’re eyeing.”

Would be so:

“If you don’t focus on the pain in your eye, it might diminish a little. In the meantime, here’s an Ibu.”

How much nicer would it be to hear that, rather than someone denying your pain and trying to be wise about it?

Then there’s this crusty old chestnut:

“Successful people don’t count their mistakes, they make their mistakes count.”

Ugh! Can you hear the misplaced narcissism on that person? They wanted to say, “I’m so wise. My every word,” but they came up with that ridiculous idea reversal instead. It doesn’t even make sense! Who goes around making mistakes on purpose? Not any sane person. Who goes around trying their worst? If any, very few. No, we try our best.

In fact, the majority try to learn from their mistakes rather than making them again, or making them “count,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. We try to learn from other people’s mistakes as well, and that’s why we read. Read about the failures of another and you don’t have to feel the pain yourself. Read someone else’s poorly constructed thought and you don’t have to repeat the process, or become a cynical old man who writes about other people’s quotes.