Try this: get a pencil with designs on it, and put one of those thick bright erasers on top. Next time you go to a meeting or seminar, sit this pencil at the edge of your own things for note-taking. Sit back and watch what happens.
First are the looks- real casual, and subtle. After a few hours, someone will not be able to resist, and the pencil will quickly be 'borrowed'. But watch carefully what they do with it. The eraser HAS to be tried out, the lead tested for sharpness. Pictures are drawn, smiley faces, curly ques. Name are written, erased, written again. Swoops and sloping lines and sketch images of body parts. Then, your 'borrower' will discover themselves again and hand back the pencil with a sheepish grin.
We all just want to be kids don't we?
Ok- epidemiology week 2 and I am upping the ante a bit.
He is fuzzy with brown spots and a bright yellow head. He has come to see me through another class... my pencil giraffe. I'm sorry but note taking just FEELS better when it is not you, but a fuzzy giraffe writing things down!
But, his fur was so soft, and he was just barely sharpened, that those who had snuck my pencil some weeks before to draw delicate designs and names in shrines during class quickly had their eyes riveted to my spot. They were not alone. The room shifted focus.
Epi-de-me... oh yes, that data makes sense, sure 'risk factor' ok
risk factor of my giraffe disappearing....
This boy would need a passport or I would never get him back. During lunch I sequestered myself in with the secretary and worked on official business. By the time we were all seated around our conference table, ready for the next set of lectures, Leon Teabiscuit was a world traveller. His Giraffe Replublíc passport was stamped with five visas from his visit to various lands. During lunch, he had journeyed already to Indonesia, followed by Nicaragua, detoured to Ethiopia, then home to Rwanda, where giraffes supposedly grow on trees. Or maybe, they grow like trees... Next thing I knew he was flying to India and the United States, but he had to be vigilant! Dangerous places for a giraffe who might end up in a cage.
When he arrived at the airport of El Salvador, due to a strike by border control, he was forced to hitchhike to Mexico with the Zapatistas. He headed back again to El Salvador, but again was delayed in the airport so long he was kidnapped by an Iranian journalist who needed his passport for an alibi to get back home. He barely escaped with his life, finally got his visa to get IN to El Salvador and decided he had been waiting too long. He hiked it up to Canada. The Inuits were quite taken with him, but trees are not plentiful in the arctic. So he took one last boat and headed back to Holland, where he was fed a bouquet of tulips upon entry.
What was that? We are done for today? Oh, what a great lecture we had- I understand everything completely. When you ask where my notes are: they were eaten by my giraffe!
He got hungry on his journey.
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