Great Minds Think Alike

It’s often said that great minds think alike—but can that really be the truth?

There are a few qualities that are used to define a mind as “great”.  The mind must have the ability to:

1.     Comprehend things that are, to lesser minds, inconceivable.

2.     Imagine things that no other mind can fathom.

3.     Conquer some sort of existing problem by means of critical thinking and analysis.

All in all, the thing that makes a mind truly great is its ability to be unique and unlike anything we’ve ever encountered.  To be “unique” is to be “one of a kind”, so how can we say that two unique minds are the same?

The word great means considerably above the normal or average, distinguished. 

Being distinguished is being successful, authoritative, something that commands respect, outstanding.

Outstanding is exceptionally good, clearly noticeable, notable.

Unsurprisingly, notable means worthy of attention of notice, remarkable, noteworthy.

To be noteworthy is to be interesting or unusual.

Unusual is defined as uncommon, rare, something remarkable or interesting because it’s different from or better than others.

As it turns out, the very thing that makes a mind “great” is what sets it apart from all other minds and keeps it from thinking similarly to others.  No two un-great minds think alike, so how can we justify the idea of two great minds— minds that change our world and shape our youth—thinking alike?

A Piece of Cake

T-minus 6 minutes until the opening of the gates at the Fairmont County Fair and Stacey was losing it.  She’d been planning the fair’s opening day for close to six months—down to every last detail.  On paper, this was to be the best fair that the town of Fairmont had ever seen.  But things were not going according to plan.

The official Book of Rules had been printed and distributed to each of the hand-selected volunteers, but it was clear to Stacey that no one had bothered to read it. 

Violation of Rule 26, Article 7:  the volunteers at the corn dog stand were only wearing one hair net each, when the rule clearly stated that they each wear two.

Violation of Rule 13, Article 9:  volunteer clowns should be sure their socks are of two different colors and designs to maximize audience enjoyment.

Violation of Rule 71, Article 5:  the cakewalk station needs to supply cake (and only cake) as a prize to whichever lucky fair-attendee happens to be on the winning square when the music stops.

Stacey could deal with the corn dog stand workers’ carelessness by bringing extra hair nets around and the clown problem could be easily solved by making the volunteers trade socks until no clown wore two matching ones, but the ignorance of the cakewalk volunteers was crossing the line.

Who do these people think they are, serving pie instead of cake?  At my fair!  And what’s with all these extra rules?  This is a cakewalk, for God’s sake!  It’s meant to be easy enough for all Fairmont citizens, Stacey thought to herself as she marched over to the cakewalk station.  Furious, she told herself it was time to teach them—and all the other volunteers for that matter—a lesson.

“I don’t know what all these pies are doing here, but this is a cakewalk,” Stacey boomed as she reached across the table and grabbed the plate with the biggest piece of blueberry pie.  She whipped the plate in front of her body to her right to show the volunteers what a ridiculous joke this entire fair had turned into.  As she did, the blueberry goop sloshed off the side of the plate and landed at her feet with a juicy plop!

There was a moment of silence in which no one knew whether the fair had rules against laughing at this sort of thing.

Through her clenched teeth Stacey managed to say, “this should be a piece of cake!  All of it!  Just a piece of cake—is that asking too much?”

She marched away, yelling at the janitorial staff through her headset.  T-minus 3 minutes until the opening of the gates.  This fair was turning out to be anything but a piece of cake.

*This story is for my mom—thanks for being a better mom than I ever could’ve asked for.  I love you and Happy Mother’s Day! 

No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk

No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk

“Oh, don’t worry, honey.  There’s no use crying over spilt milk.”

“Unless that milk was the only thing you had to eat or drink for two weeks straight and you just spilled it and now you and your entire family are probably gonna starve or die or something… Then you can cry about it.”

“Well… I suppose it’s alright to cry then.”

“Or if you’re an actor and the director tells you Hey! You better start crying over that spilt milk or you’re fired, buddy!  In that case, you’d have to cry over split milk if you wanted to keep your job.”

“Yes, I guess that’s right.”

“Or if you were alive before the vacuum cleaner was invented and your job was to go around a restaurant with a straw and quickly slurp up the drinks people spilled before it got on the carpet.  And if you were lactose intolerant, then it would be okay to cry about spilt milk—everyone would understand.”

“That’s, uhh, very creative, hon.  I don’t think—“

“Or if you were a milkman and you spilled an entire truck load of milk and you knew you were gonna get fired because that’s exactly the kind of thing a milkman can’t do, then it would be okay to cry over spilt milk.”

 “These are very unique examples, but the expression—“

“Or if you were only pretending to be a milkman but really you were an undercover cop and you were dropping off milk at the mob boss’ house and it was one of those sting operations and the bottles of milk you dropped off had little teeny tiny invisible-like microphones and cameras and you were supposed to give them the milk and get out of there but you were nervous and your hands were sweating and you dropped the whole case of milk right outside their door and they opened it to see what all the noise was and they looked down at the split milk and it was sort of sparking and they could tell you were trying to bug their joint and they just looked up at you and you could tell they were going to kill everyone and everything you loved and then they were gonna kill you.  Then it would be okay to cry—not just for you but for your whole family, you know?”

“Enough.  I love how creative you are, but this needs to stop.  No use crying over spilt milk is an expression—it’s like what happened, happened and crying about it isn’t going to change a thing.  You understand?  Okay, now will you please eat your breakfast?  You’re going to be late for school.” 

A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned

Janet didn’t have a problem.  She’d been collecting things her entire life—books, stamps, porcelain dolls, rocks, empty bottles, slightly broken chairs.  She didn’t even hesitate anymore when people stared at her with gaping mouths as she dug through the bins of garbage outside the Hillridge Apartment Complex two and a half miles from her house.  So what if they watched her with disgust?  That was their problem, not hers.

It all started when she was about twelve, a few months after her family moved to New York.  Her father was an avid drinker, and he was known back home for being a bit loose with his wallet when he’d had a few too many drinks.  That wasn’t his biggest problem, though.  His biggest problem was his pride.  Afraid to admit just how much of a screw up he really was, Janet’s father would often bet what little money his wife had earned doing laundry that week—the money that was meant to buy their family bread, milk, and butter.

But he didn’t care, as long as he didn’t have to admit his own failure, as long as he could blame luck.  So what if it meant they would go to bed hungry?  It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

One day Janet walked in to find her father passed out on the couch in just his underwear, her mother crouching on the floor over his pants.  In about three seconds her mother had successfully taken the few coins remaining in his pockets, put two down the front of her dress and slipped the third back in his pants to avoid suspicion.  When she saw Janet watching her, she simply whispered, “A penny saved is a penny earned” and walked away.

Janet started collecting, too.  If a penny saved is a penny earned, think of what I can earn by saving stuff worth more than a stupid penny, she thought.  And so it began.

She might have come from humble beginnings, but look at her now!  Janet had an entire house all to herself.  And the things—God, she had so many possessions!  Her house was crammed to the top with them, every free space housing a stack of newspapers or a bag of old cans she was planning on exchanging for cash.  Under the piles of partner-less shoes she had chairs and tables that were only missing one leg, which she knew could be easily fixed and then resold to make a quick buck.  She just hadn’t had the chance to sit down and physically fix the legs—not yet.  But she would.  Just you wait and see, she thought to herself whenever someone brought this fact to her attention.

The smell didn’t bother her too much either—it was just something that came with the glory of owning things she supposed.  Other people might complain, but screw them.  They could make their houses smell like whatever they wanted, but this was her house and she happened to like the smell of success… Well, it was closer to the smell of a corpse rotting in a garbage dump on a hot August day, but who cares? 

She didn’t have friends, but it was better that way.  Less people askin' me for money, she told herself whenever she noticed how quiet a house without people could get. 

But none of that mattered because Janet was going to be filthy rich one of these days—as soon as she had a chance to fix the broken chairs and repaint the faded dolls’ cheeks.  All she had to do, for now, was keep collecting and saving things.  Whenever she started to doubt her approach to life, she just thought of what her mother said all those years ago and she’d feel better.  A penny saved is a penny earned, and just look at all the stuff I’ve saved!  I’m gonna be richer than a king someday, Janet would think to herself time and again. 

If she thought it enough, repeated it over and over, one of these days she might just believe it.  One of these days it might become true.  

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Rrggrrrr. I could hear the guttural growling coming from behind me as I sprinted down the deserted gravel road towards my house. 

What have I done to provoke this chase? Nothing! I haven’t done anything at all! So what’s going on, why was I chosen as the target when there were at least six other young men who’s capture would prove more worthy of the time and effort this animal was putting in. 

I can hear him gaining on me, panting like the stupid dog that he is. Man, what an idiotic creature. Doesn’t he know I have nothing for him? I don’t bring a lunch to work because I have to go home to the wife during my much too short lunch break. The other men sat there with sandwiches, Tupperware containers filled with leftovers from the previous night, freshly baked desserts you could smell from a mile away, and yet this dumb dog chose to come after me—the only man with nothing to give.

He’s gaining on me. I see a tree not too far off, and I figure I can climb up there and hide until he loses interest and saunters away to scavenge the deserted lunching grounds for scraps of food the other men left behind.

I manage to fumble my way into the tree, and the dog circles the trunk growling and barking—as if that will do anything at all. He stares me down like I’m the enemy. I can’t help but yell down to him.

“What are you looking at, you stupid dog? I have nothing for you!”

My screams are met with an unsettlingly deep and constant growl. He doesn’t look as if he’ll be giving up any time soon. I try a new approach: reason.

“If I had any food, don’t you think I would’ve given it to you long ago? It doesn’t make sense for me to run for this long and sit in this tree when I could easily escape by giving you whatever food I was hoarding. But I haven’t got any food with me. I swear.”

The growling continues and he snarls, showing me his surprisingly sharp teeth. Other than his flaring nostrils, he shows no signs of exhaustion. Clearly reason means nothing to a beast like this.

Both physically and emotionally exhausted, I cry out, “I can’t give you what you want! I have nothing. Please! You’re making a mistake—you’re barking up the wrong tree!”

My words have no effect on the snarling, growling, foaming-at-the-mouth beast that just won’t quit. I try to settle back into the web of branches. It looks like I’ll be up here for quite some time. 

Have An Axe To Grind

Hey Mike, you’ve got to get yourself an axe. Everyone around here has an axe, and all the men chop their own wood for their fires. I know you’re new here, you probably don’t know how to do any of that sort of stuff, but I can help you get started in the beginning.

Well, I did exactly what Joe told me to. I went out, found an axe at the corner store, and brought it back in my new—well, new to me—Chevy Silverado. I’m new to the area and let me just say, it’s a lot harder to meet people up here in the wilderness. If it weren’t for my wife, Lisa, I don’t think I would’ve met any of our neighbors until the snow melted—and who knows when that might be? We just moved up here to Elk Rapids, and it’s much more isolated than either one of us expected. 

Lisa met Joe’s wife at the market in Traverse City, Michigan, about 20 miles South of our town. They got to talking and I guess Joe’s wife sensed our awkward struggle to adjust to life up here in Northern Michigan, and the very next day both Joe and his wife showed up at our door with some treats from the Elk Rapids Sweet Shop. After they’d come in and warmed up, the women left Joe and I in the kitchen so we could “talk shop”, or whatever they call it.

Joe gave me lots of advice about the lifestyle of Northern Michigan, especially about how to beat the bone-chilling cold. He offered to help me sharpen the blade of my axe once I’d bought one, and all I had to do was stop by his house. Our guests— our new friends—left and Lisa and I felt a lot better about our new life together. I bought an axe two days later, and I couldn’t wait to see Joe again and to learn a couple more “tricks of the trade”.

Well, it’s been four weeks since I bought that axe and I still haven’t heard back from Joe. I’ve tried to catch him at his house, at the market, at the nearest bait store, Butch’s Tackle and Marine, but I haven’t had any luck running into him. I thought I saw him a couple weeks ago at the Work Boots Superstore, but when I called out to him, the man just briskly walked away.

At first, I thought this was a common problem in a small town like Elk Rapids, but I now realize that Joe’s been avoiding me this entire time. What a guy! He offers to help, then the second you try to take him up on the offer, he goes out of his way not to see you. I’m very frustrated, and frankly, I’m a little hurt by the whole ordeal. I talked to Lisa and she’s encouraged me to talk to Joe about it and let him know that I have a problem with the way he’s been avoiding me. I don’t like confrontation, but it seems like—

As he wrote, Mike looked out the window and he almost couldn’t believe his eyes. Out in the snow, walking through the forest on the West side of his house, he spotted Joe. Mike knew it was him because of his red-brown jacket, and his navy, fur-lined hat. As Mike fumbled to grab his own hat and jacket, he ran outside to the shed to grab his axe before headed into the woods to find Joe. Mike saw him through some trees and yelled, “Hey, Joe! Wait up, will ya? I’ve got an axe to grind with you, buddy!”