Whego

Here's some irony.

The other day I got a few thoughtful emails from loyal readers. One commented on the seemingly difficult task of coming up with a creative idea every day - which by the way, usually comes far more easily than the writing, linking, Facebooking, and photo-embedding portion of the endeavor that Cheryl, Katie, and Heather get roped into.

But, like the gymnast who makes the mistake of thinking about her beam routine or the tennis player who focuses on the mechanics of her serve, sometimes... thinking about how we do what we do is the very thing that gets in our way.

This morning I fell off the beam. Double faulted on my serve.

With no creative idea and a 4:00 a.m. deadline, I panicked. I asked Richard to give me two words - two words, which according to our friend von Oech, could serve as my oracle. "Whiskey" and "Lego," that's what he gave me.

What?!?

Immediately I Google and get this Metallica video. Not quite what I was thinking.

The idea of Legos, maybe. I have a house full of them - in my cushions, stuck in drawers, under pillows, in the vegetable drawer of our refrigerator. You know, all the places you might expect to come upon Legos. And while I'm at it... BIG thanks to my sister who sent Matthew the 645-piece Railway Express Lego System for Christmas! SYSTEM! Come to think of it, maybe Richard was onto something when he said, "Whiskey."

Thing of it is, I recently did some training for residence life staff at a local college. When I was a resident assistant (RA), we used Legos to demonstrate basic principles of communication. You have a pile of Legos. I have a pile of Legos. The test is whether or not you can recreate the structure I built, based solely on my verbal communication. NO PEEKING!

Leogs + Nostalgia = Today's creative idea.

Problem. You might not have Legos.

I'll improvise. Grab a piece of paper and a writing utensil.

I will communicate a series of instructions which, if followed, will result in a recognizable drawing of an every day item. Let's see how you do. If you feel like it... send a picture of your masterpiece to info@highlowaha.com by 10:00 tonight. No refining. No do-overs. It'll be funnier that way. We'll post your interpretations tomorrow, for a good laugh. Think this is fun? Try it with friends and family over dinner tonight.

Now the instructions...

• Turn your paper so it sits vertically (not landscape) .
  
• Begin at the top left hand side of the page, draw a line approximately three and a half inches to the right, rounded, but angled downward.
  
• Adjacent to the end of the line sitting lower on the page, draw a line approximately six and a half inches long, down, but angled slightly left.
  
• Adjacent to the bottom of the line just drawn, draw another line three and a half inches long, directly below and parallel to the first line drawn.
  
• From the end of that line, draw a two and a half inch line up.
  
• Do the same to the above parallel line. But, draw this line two and a half inches down.
  
• Connect those two lines with a backward letter "C."
• From the center of the line closest to the bottom of the page, draw what might look like a small piece of rigatoni.
• Extending from that and extending to the bottom of the page, draw a series of cursive lower-case letter "e"s.

Now take a picture and email it in by 10:00 p.m. CST. And, leave us a comment letting us know how it.

It's official, isn't it? Whego. Whego'in crazy.

Signing off until tomorrow...