Hurricane's Eye

Third Place Winners: Impossibly Cute Future Rulers of the World 

I'm in a bit of a lull at work - hence the title of this post. After busting our humps for a week and a half in order to be ready for an important meeting last week, the meeting, of course, was cancelled. Since then, we've just been waiting for direction.

This gives us time for a trip to the land of the Yessir Yessir Highway and the dark and terrible Troll Bridge.

*******

The ruler of a small and pleasant realm was taking a short break from her paperwork. She'd just read a surprising letter and needed a minute or two to mull it over.

As if on cue, a messenger appeared at the door.

"Oh great ruler," began the messenger, who wore the insignia of the Troll Bridge, "infinite in wisdom and favour, gracious beyond compare, as bright as the sun and as warm as buns fresh from the oven ..."

The Ruler, alarmed by the politeness, braced herself.

"Greetings, messenger" said the Ruler, and she smiled bravely. "What business brings you here?"

"Golden eggs have been stolen," said the messenger, abandoning protocol and cutting right to the chase. "Right beneath our noses, almost a third of them. The Emperor is fit to be tied."

"The Emperor's lost his golden eggs?" the Ruler repeated.

"Yes ma'am," said the messenger.

"And why is this my problem?" asked the Ruler. "You should take this to the Ruler next door. She does eggs."

"No ma'am," said the messenger, "The Head Troll wants you to find the eggs."

"I'll get right on it," said the Ruler, intending to do no such thing. "I'll just need to consult with my advisors first."

"See that you do," threatened the messenger. "The Head Troll wants those eggs." The messenger spun on his heel and left.

Checking first that the messenger was well and truly gone, the Ruler took from the drawer where she had concealed it the letter from the Great Treasury she'd received not two minutes before the Troll Bridge messenger arrived.

The Great Treasury letter set out in detail what the Ruler's boss to the fifth power - The Greatest Ruler - had done with the missing golden eggs. They were spent. 

This problem - as great as it was - was not as great as the problem that the Ruler knew something that neither the Great Troll (her boss to the third power) nor the Emperor (her boss to the fourth power) apparently knew.

The Ruler called Chappie - her most trusted advisor - and the Wizard - her most skilled improvisor - into her chambers. She showed them the letter and told them of the visit from the messenger.

"I can distract the Head Troll with shiny balloons," said the Wizard.

"We could shutter the place and wait for this to blow over," said Chappie.

"These are good ideas," said the Ruler, "and they have worked for us before. But this time, we need something different. No misdirection. No hiding."

This Wizard looked deeper into his bag of tricks. "How about this?" he said, pulling out some sticky tape. "We could make it someone else's problem."

"I tried that," said the Ruler. "What else you got?"

The Wizard dug around at the very bottom of the bag. He pulled out a pair of worn-looking boots.

"Kick it upstairs?" he asked, knowing full well that was it for the bag of tricks.

"Give this to the Henchman?" asked the Ruler, her hand instinctively covering a recently bruised rib. 

"Let's do that."

******

The nice young people lined up in this week's picture were the third-prize winners, but definitely first-place crowd pleasers, at something called a "hack-a-thon" - which I think would be roughly analogous to something like a dance marathon, which is to say a thing that young people do to develop a sense of accomplishment that prepares them for their lives as adults but that is not just something that pleases their parents like finishing their vegetables or doing their homework - where I sat on a panel of judges to select the top three ideas for how to help people modify their behaviour to take action on climate change.

It was fun and demanding. My fellow judges and I watched fifteen, five-minute pitches of varying quality and, after about the sixth one, what seemed like limited variety.

Awards were given for "first group to make a pitch that was clear, easy to follow and thought through" (First Prize), "the group with the truly best idea" (Second Prize), and, as noted above, "the group with the cutest, brightest, most appealing collection of youngsters" (Third Prize).

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen