A Creative Tale

Once upon a time in a small town named after a dictionary, in upstate New York, there lived a very creative (but not "artsy") creature, stuck inside the body of a frumpy middle-aged woman. (Well, it is hard to be creative with long gray hair when you have no "hair skills", but it does get complements when drawn up in a clip on top of one's creative head.) Well, this creative creature got into an adventure when she could not say "no" to coaching an Odyssey of the Mind team. After all, doesn't Odyssey of the Mind promote and support the very thing she lives for? Creativity! And so the adventure was undertaken. Months later, as the competition approached, her tongue swollen from biting it (so she would not give illegal adult assistance), she wondered if she would make it to the finish line. And, more important, what would she do when she got there?

Would she bask in the glow of blossoming creativity in her proteges? And would there be much more time for her own creativity to be fulfilled with projects and new ideas for work? And would there be extra hours of sleep, perchance to dream creative thoughts? The creative mind could imagine these and many other scenarios. But, alas, it was not to be, for the creative creature lost all sensibility and turned into a mindless screaming meamie in the final days, until finally she froze into a hard shelled automaton, with not a thought in her head.

The moral of the story is : Just say no. Or nyet, or nein, or non, or nada, or nope, or no way Jose... Wait a sec. If she can think "no" that many ways perhaps she is not really an automaton, but merely trapped inside one for the duration. Where there's life, there's hope...
Stayed tuned, dear reader, to see if the creature comes out of it alive!