By Barbara Poelle
The Fourth Annual Poelle Polish Turkey Trot and Gobble Wobble ™ on Thursday was a shining success. Again, won by Husband, but extra points to the Minnesota contingency for style. (I wish I could post the picture of my lovely mother carrying a bottle of rum over the finish line, but this is a family show.) HOWEVER! To add adventure to athleticism, this past Black Friday was host to:
The First Annual Poelle Scavenger Hunt and Manhattan Mêlée™
Sponsored by
Root International: If You’re Reading This, I Sold it.
Oh yes, you have correctly deduced the above. A colleague of mine, whom we’ll call Wolly Goot, designed a Scavenger Hunt for Husband and me, which took place on the hilly isle of inebriation (those Ojibwa sure can name stuff) on Friday. The list was as extensive as it was impossible and when the big and the little hand met at twelve, IT. WAS. ON.
I thought about posting the list, but it is just so dang good that my goal is to convince her to design one for each city and then I will turn around and sell THE GREAT BIG BOOK OF WOLLY GOOT SCAVENGER HUNTS for a skertillion dollars. It truly was stupefyingly fantabuliffic.
Not only was it a hilarious way to spend the day, but it really played on the strengths of Team Poelle. Each section was grouped by how many points it was worth to secure a photo of/object from/ autograph by, with the first grouping worth 1 point, the next 2-5, the next 15 etc. Now, one of us burst out the front door of Root International, camera flailing, and began wildly careening down the street looking for someone wearing leggings who shouldn’t be and a car with multiple parking tickets on the windshield. Meanwhile, the other strolled quietly in tow, creating a comprehensive mapping system with corresponding locations and subway lines in order to achieve maximum coverage in minimum steps. While “the doer” snapped the closest parallel park without touching and 5 cabs in one frame, “the thinker” was deducing the clue which read: I said, “It is better to be a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without” go to my square and take a picture of me. While one of us sprinted down 5th bellowing “I think I see a lady using a stroller in an inappropriate manner!” The other calmly documented where 4 cemeteries lay beneath 50th St…and this is why Team Poelle works! Everyone understands that the best way to accomplish a goal is by working with our individual strengths in order to create a vortex of scavenger dominance. With this, we were able to finish with a score of TWO MILLION TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY SIX POINTS.
(Yes, one of the clues was worth two million points and therefore you know that:
a) I HAD to get it, or die trying
and
b) we will never, EVER, speak of it again. Ever. Good day.
I SAID GOOD DAY.)
We could have had two million two hundred and thirty-eight points, but I- wait for it- couldn’t get a nun to hug me. It’s true. Three different nuns SHUNNED me when I asked. Although I came kind of close when one of them pressed a bible to my forehead and kept screaming THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU while I spat and hissed. That should be worth at least a point. Because oh, how it buuuuuurned.
The craziest thing? Husband and I kind of set aside the things we thought would be easy “gets” to do at the end, and they turned out to be the hardest ones. And Husband turned to me at one point and- bless his HEART!- said, “You should blog about this, because this is kind of what it is like for your authors, the hardest edits can sometimes be the easiest ones to do, you just have to trust it will all work out.” And then he shoved me through the swinging door of a restaurant kitchen and snapped a photo. (The expression on the chef’s face in the background should by itself be worth 3 points.)
Later that evening, while I was hugging a fireman in front of Ghostbusters headquarters, I reflected upon what he said and realized that the whole experience was indeed the perfect analogy for how your publishing team works. Everyone from your agent to your publicist to your editor has a specific strength that they play to and whether they do it loudly and with much swearing, or with quiet panache and dignity, the combined team work might just quite possibly get you to House of Brews by 9:57 pm with over 2 million points.
And that, my dear friends…well, forget the Hokey Pokey, because THAT’S what it’s all about.
