Wednesday, 15 December 2004 | Three-peat

I said something that the adults around me found amusing, decided that I liked their response, and then said it again in hopes of repeating my success. My brother was quick to inform me, "You can't say something funny twice. It's not funny the second time."

My brother's advice was helpful. From that point on, I began paying more attention to my words and the response they received, and I often passed his advice onto my friends, managing to sound as condescending as my brother, even though I was their same age. To this day I hate repeating myself, and will often preface a story with, "Stop me if I've told you this already." I didn't, however, apply my brother's lesson to all of my good ideas.

Like the time I had a good idea for a science fair project, when I illustrated how evaporation works. Honestly, I didn't care about how evaporation worked, but I had a vivid picture of how I'd make the rain look real, and I wanted to try it out: I would cut clear plastic paper in strips and staple it to the ceiling of a box. Then I'd build a science project around that!

I think it went over well, but it only encouraged me to make the same thing again and again, year after year, until I was way too old to pass that off as a science project. The thing is, I didn't even use the same project from the previous year—I wasn't being lazy—I actually recreated a copy of my original idea, starting from scratch each time. It varied, certainly, and got prettier as I became more adept, but it also became proportionally sadder, because for each year that I insisted on making the evaporation project, I revealed myself as increasingly unoriginal and entirely science-impaired.

My idea reuse wasn't limited to science. Between the years of third and sixth grade, I created a diorama for every book I was made to illustrate for English class. I inevitably put some grass, people, and furniture in the bottom of the shoebox, cut a viewing hole in the side, and covered the box using a hideous roll of contact paper that had a bold pattern resembling stained glass. (The contact paper was always the same.)

[I should mention that I still have at least one of these dioramas in my old closet (pack rat). I'm almost scared to put my eye up to the viewing hole, as I imagine I'll get attacked by a small rodent that's made its home inside.]

...

When I was in fifth grade, my friend Wendy and I decided that we would dress in complementary costumes for Halloween. I was to be a TV, and she would be a toaster, and we'd call ourselves "TV and appliance." We decorated large cardboard boxes with paint, construction paper, and aluminum foil; we cut out holes for our heads and arms; and we attached plugs to our boxes like tails. To show that we belonged together, Wendy carried around a sign that bore the title of our costume, with a happy exclamation mark at the end.

Why should a good idea die after only one use? I would wear a cardboard box of some sort for Halloween for the following three years. It was uncomfortable, awkward, and—by that point—trite, but I never had to worry about running into anyone else dressed in the same costume.

Actually, it may have been my stint dressing as a box for Halloween that ended my liberal reuse policy. I'm pretty sure I don't do that anymore.