Dr. Suess, Exploding Eggs & Me

It seems that everyone but me has wished Dr. Suess a happy birthday.

A dear friend of mine (the fabulous Robin Blakely author of Six Hats, the step-by-step book on how to create a successful one-person business) wrote an article on how authors were inspired by Dr. Suess.  A casting call for input resulted in her being inundated with responses. My local paper ran articles about how teachers and students were celebrating with in-class Suess festivals. That led me to wonder why I seemed to be the only one who didn't have a creative brush with the good doctor.

Little did I know that  he had been hitching a ride inside my head for years. That realization hit me last night. After a lovely evening out, I came home to find my house filled with smoke (no, the alarms didn't go off despite the little green light assuring me the smoke detectors were working), smelling of rotten eggs, and looking like Thing 1 and Thing 2 had visited my kitchen.

 As I rushed to open the windows and doors, I ran through what happened in the hours before I left the house. I distinctly remembered turning off the flame under the pot of boiling eggs – I just hadn't turned it off all the way. There was still a little lick of heat that in four hours time evaporated the water and exploded all six eggs.

I suppose I should have been cursing my own stupidity, the lateness of the hour, and the unique mess only eggs can make. Instead, I found myself thinking about Green Eggs & Ham, Horton Hatches an Egg, and The Cat In The Hat. Eggs and chaos, patience and perplexity, Things 1 and 2, potential disaster, misunderstandings, surprise visitors, redemption just in the nick of time.While scrubbing the floor,  I realized that every book I write, every creative idea I've ever had, can be traced back to the lessons Dr. Suess taught by example.

He hadn't just entertained me as a child; his imagination had sparked mine. His crazy tumble of nonsensical yet oh-so-understandable prose showed me that words were like clay to be molded, shaped and finally fired in a creative kiln. It was Dr. Suess who taught me that a simple premise is the best foundation  for a story; the possibilities of what you can build upon that foundation are limitless. He made me realize that all a writer really had to do was abandon themselves to the power of words, suspend disbelief, and free-fall into the tale they wanted to tell.

So happy birthday Dr. Suess! Thank you for peeling back the universe and giving me a glimpse of what lies beyond, for exploding eggs, for creative chaos. Thank you from this author, this  reader, this child at heart and (if cooking eggs are an indication) this cousin to Thing 1 & Thing 2.