CHAPTER ONE
One Red Paperclip
It was the best idea ever. Bigger and Better. It had legs. Bigger and Better was a game. A mash-up between a scavenger hunt and trick-or-treating. Youâd start with a small object and go door-to-door to see if anybody would trade something bigger or better for it. When you made a trade youâd go to another door and see if you could trade your new object for something bigger and better. Eventually, with enough hard work, you could end up with something much bigger and better than what you started with.
For example, you could start with a spoon. Youâd take that spoon to the neighborâs house, and maybe theyâd offer you a boot. You could then take the boot to the next neighbor and theyâd say, âHey! I could use a boot, I accidentally threw one of mine out the passenger window onto the shoulder of the freeway last week. I have an old microwave. Would you like to trade that boot for a microwave?â
At this point youâd nod yes, take the microwave, and run as fast as possible to find your friends and show off your new microwave. Youâd have a great story about how you got your microwave and from that moment on stare at every solitary boot on the side of a freeway and wonder if that was the boot. Then a few weeks later your mom would come into your room and say, âHey, I canât find my antique spoon. Have you seen it anywhere?â At this point youâd shake your head no and sheâd say, âAnd do you know anything about that smelly old microwave in the garage?â
Bigger and Better was awesome.
I grew up in Port Moody, a suburb east of Vancouver, Canada. Friends at high school told tales of amazing Bigger and Better adventures. One group started with a penny and traded up to a couch in just one afternoon. Another group started with a clothespin and worked their way up to a fridge in an evening. Rumor had it that in the next suburb over, some kids started early in the morning with a toothpick and traded all the way up to a car before the day was over. A car. Of course nobody had proof that any of these things actually happened, but it didnât matter. Suburban legend or not, it was possible. Anything was possible. And we were all about making anything possible.
We were sixteen. Weâd just passed our road tests. The driverâs licenses were just itching to be used. There was only one thing on our mind: cars. We wanted to be Marty McFly. We wanted to park our freshly waxed black 1985 Toyota pickup on an angle in the garage and turn the front wheels to enhance its sportiness. We wanted to take Jennifer up to the lake for the big party on the weekend. Yeah, where we were going, we wouldnât need roads. So much was possible. Our children could one day meet a middle-aged DeLorean-driving mad scientist who would invent the flux capacitor and accidentally get sent back in time to right all the wrong choices weâd made in our lives so we could then realize our dream of being science fiction writers.
It was possible.
But we were sixteen. And never read science fiction books. Or even remotely considered the idea of being writers.
We looked at each other and nodded. That night was the night. It was going to happen. We were going to do it. We were going to play Bigger and Better until we got cars. Tonight. All we needed was a toothpick. We couldnât find a toothpick, so we âfoundâ the next best thing: a Christmas tree from the local Christmas tree lot.
We picked up the Christmas tree and carried it over to the first house that still had its lights on. We knocked on the door. We heard footsteps. We looked at one another. We were so getting cars. A shadow approached the door and reached for the handle. Cars by the end of the night. The door opened. A man stepped into the door frame, looked at us with the Christmas tree in our hands, made a slight face, and said, âYes?â We quickly explained how we were playing Bigger and Better, told him our plan to trade up to a car by the end of night, and waited in full expectation. All he had to do was trade us something. Anything. He looked at the Christmas tree, laughed slightly, and said, âSorry, guys, Iâd love to help you out, but I donât have a use for a second Christmas tree.â He stretched his arm toward the front room, and pointed at the most over-elaborately decorated Christmas tree of all time. It shone bright white. It was like heaven, in Christmas tree form. We looked back at our meager little tree, hung our heads low, and watched the car in our minds go poof. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and said, âMaybe try next door? Good luck!â
We walked off and looked at the tree. It was too late at night to play Bigger and Better. Weâd try next door tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow had next door written all over it. Tomorrow had âcarâ written all over it.
But we never played Bigger and Better tomorrow.
We quit because Bigger and Better wasnât as easy as we expected it to be. That was ten years ago. Ten years had passed since that night weâd played Bigger and Better. So many things had happened since then. Iâd finished school, traveled, met new people, worked all over the world, and experienced so many things. I even shook Al Rokerâs hand. In all those years I never finished that game of Bigger and Better. But it was still the best idea ever.
I looked out into the distance and imagined the possibilities. A car from a toothpick. It was possible. But how would I trade a toothpick for a car nowadays? I made a confident face, and looked even further into the distance, as though it would help. It might have made for an amazing inspiration-seeking moment in a movie, except the distance wasnât a setting sun smoldering over the remains of a freshly annihilated evil alien civilization or a windswept sea-shore with waves and unsurpassed vistas. The distance was a brick wall five feet from my head. A brick wall that held up one side of the small one-bedroom apartment in Montreal my girlfriend, Dominique, and I rented.
Iâd moved to Montreal with Dom the previous summer after she got a job as a flight attendant with an airline that had since gone bankrupt. Sheâd found a job at a hospital as a dietician soon after that. Weâd been together for three years. While I looked into the distance and reminisced about juvenile adventures of yore, Dom was at work. Dom had a job. I was âbetween jobs.â Iâd been âbetween jobsâ for almost a year, bridging the gap from time to time by working at trade shows promoting products for friends.
But those trade shows were few and far between.
I was just some guy. What was I thinking? Iâd just stared at a brick wall for the better part of an hour. Iâd nearly wasted an entire afternoon. I remembered the job at hand. My rĂ©sumĂ©. My cover letter. My future. That whole get-a-job thing.
Rent was due soon, and I couldnât sponge off Dom for another month. Iâd sponged for a few months. It had to stop. It was my turn to provide. I looked at the rĂ©sumĂ© on my computer screen.
Motivational words from my high school business education teacher rang out in my mind. Sheâd say, âYou need to sell yourself to a potential employer. You need to showcase your skills.â Sheâd then pull out an overhead slide projector and show us how to implement the five secrets of the perfect rĂ©sumĂ©. And boy did those five secrets work! We all had jobs at fast food joints in less than a week. When youâre sixteen, a bagful of âfreeâ burgers pretty much guaranteed you were on easy street. Living at home makes everything so much simpler.
Dom was about to cut me off if I didnât get my act together. I had to figure something out. Fast. I asked myself a simple question: Did I really want to implement the five secrets of the perfect rĂ©sumĂ© or did I want to do something else?
Something else sounds pretty good right now!
I didnât want to sell myself to anyone. I just wanted to do things. I wanted to explore. I wanted to play. I wanted to be.
But things were different now. I wasnât some punk kid who âborrowedâ Christmas trees and lived with his parents. I was an unemployed twenty-five-year-old guy lucky enough to have a girlfriend who helped cover my portion of the rent while I was âbetween jobs.â
I was sick of sponging off others. I was sick of being âbetween jobs.â I was tired of quotation markâaccompanied euphemisms for being unemployed. There was really only one thing I wanted to do. I wanted to provide. I wanted to put food on the table. I wanted to break the cycle we were in. We worked hard for our money, then shoveled it directly into the landlordâs pocket. Well, Dom worked hard for our money, but I definitely helped shovel it into the landlordâs pocket. Sure, paying rentâs not all bad. Thereâs something to be said for being able to covertly pack up all your stuff in the middle of the night, then fly away to another country on a momentâs notice. Donât get me wrong, landlords are often pleasant, trustworthy folk. I just didnât want anything to do with them. A place where you pay rent is just somewhere you havenât moved out of yet. But with enough time, care, and effort, a place of your own can become a home.
I wanted to come home at the end of the day, hang my top hat on the hat stand by the doorway, look up at the roof above my head, and smile with satisfaction that I owned that roof. A roof of our own. We could do anything under that roof. If we wanted to knock down a wall, then thatâs exactly what we could do. Nobody could say otherwise.
If I started small, thought big, and had fun, it could all happen.
It was possible.
For it to be possible, I had to start. I had to do more than the first time Iâd tried to play Bigger and Better. The time Iâd never even made a single trade. Bigger and Better had just stared back at me for the last decade. Laughing at me. Cackling, even. I thought about it again. It would take a few weeks to get a job, but I could walk outside and make Bigger and Better happen now. I made up my mind then and there. Now was the time. Not only would I play Bigger and Better, I would play it well. I would become the greatest Bigger and Better player the world had ever seen, bar none. Or I had just come up with the most elaborate way to procrastinate getting a job. Ever. Either way, I had to give it a shot. I squinted and lowered my head slightly. The rĂ©sumĂ© and cover letter could wait. I had a score to settle with Bigger and Better.
If I was going to make it happen, I needed an object to start with. Something less Christmas tree-ish than a Christmas tree. And something not blatantly stolen.
I looked down at the desk. It was a mess. Things strewn everywhere. A pen. A roll of tape. Way too many cables. A stapler. Computer speakers. My résumé and cover letter. An unmailed letter. A postcard. A banana peel. A framed picture of an eagle in flight. Various cereal bowls in various stages of not being washed. I looked back at the draft copy of my résumé and cover letter. Two sheets of paper. Two sheets of paper held together by a red paperclip.
One red paperclip.
I unclipped the red paperclip from the papers and held it up to my eye. It was perfect.
This was it.
All I had to do was go outside and trade with somebody. Surely s...