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Much Ado About Publishing

Rodents Know No Limits

by Nina L. Diamond

I used to think that people were crazy for sending text messages back and forth and taking forever to accomplish what they could’ve communicated in one 30-second phone conversation.

Then, after I took this seemingly unproductive step into the 21st century, I soon figured out the lure of texting: It’s exactly like passing notes in class.

And I loved passing notes in class.

Well, what young, budding writer wouldn’t?

I realized recently that my prolific note-passing, as well as other creative, harmless, youthful hijinks were actually wonderful preparation for the variety of skills it takes to survive in the writing, media, and publishing worlds.

Back in junior high, I had an English teacher named Mr. Clark, who, it was rumored, had once been a professional boxer. He certainly looked like that rumor could’ve been true: He was a bulldog in a suit. But, oddly, he was a smiley, friendly, bulldog, not a growling, scary one. The suit, though, was right out of a Hollywood vault from a boxing movie set in the 1940s: wide lapels, baggy, and with the biggest cuffs you ever saw.

Mr. Clark liked to walk up and down the aisles between the rows of desks while he taught. Even though I was always a great English student, I was also highly skilled at multi-tasking and saw no reason why I couldn’t write notes and pass them to my friends while listening to Mr. Clark or writing an assignment in class.

I passed those notes, and my friends passed theirs, in the usual way, from one kid to the next until it reached its final destination. And then, one day, I looked at Mr. Clark and had an epiphany: The cuffs in his pants could be used to transport notes.

And, thus, was born a distribution system.

Mr. Clark had no idea that he was distributing literature while lecturing about it. He never caught on. I’d put a note in his cuff as he passed by my desk, and I’d signal to the note’s recipient, who would then pick up the note as Mr. Clark walked by.

Even today, I think this was genius. I was a teenage pioneer in guerrilla distribution. Publishers could learn a lot from the 13-year-old version of me: Piggyback your book onto a distribution pipeline that’s already going where you want your book to go.

At Whitemarsh Junior High, in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, with a couple of friends, I also created what was then fondly and pseudo-subversively known as an “underground newspaper.” My co-conspirators were Jimmy E., who grew up to be a textbook editor, and David F., who grew up to be who-knows-what – I have no idea what became of him.

Anyway, Jimmy, David, and I were very proud of this mimeographed, stapled, couple of pages we called The 7-6 Report, after the section of the 7th grade in which we were firmly ensconced with a few dozen other students for the year.

We really didn’t have much to report that warranted our paper’s existence either above ground or underground, but we took our journalistic task seriously: We exercised our freedom of speech without censorship, and we served our target market.

During the summer between 9th and 10th grade, my family moved to Florida, just in time for me to begin high school at Miami Beach Senior High. I wrote a lot about the intensely creative, life-changing experience of Beach High in the ‘70s in my March, 2007 Much Ado About Publishing column, “The Show Must Go On,” which paid tribute at the passing of Jay Jensen, who mentored me and literally thousands of others, many of whom went on to impressive careers (including fame and fortune) in the arts, the media, and publishing.

Here are a few of the crazy things I didn’t write about in that column, things that have also served me well as a journalist and author, things that we in the media and publishing can all learn from:

My note-passing, of course, continued. Since I hadn’t had Mr. Clark’s cuffs to distribute my literary masterpieces for a couple of years, I’d had to make do with traditional student-to-student distribution. The lesson? Adaptation is everything, and, as Darwin pointed out, is key to the survival of a species – and your work.

I met my best friend, Heidi, on the first day of high school. She had just moved to Miami Beach from a Chicago suburb, and, like me, she was in theater and choir, and played the piano. She has since become a concert pianist. But, back then, she was Ethel to my Lucy.

I have so many stories about our escapades from high school, through college, and in the many years that have followed. I’ll share a few that further illustrate my points:

Heidi and I had an algebra class together and we sat right next to each other. She was a terrific math student, and I wasn’t. My brain simply does not have the receptor for algebra, geometry and anything else beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, which I do just swell.

Mr. Williams put an algebra problem on the board, and lots of brownie points would go to the first student to solve the problem at his or her desk, then run up to the board to write it out.

Heidi scribbled what, to me, were incomprehensible groupings of numbers and strange, squiggly signs on her paper. She leaned over so close to that paper that her nose practically touched the page. And she was so entranced that you could’ve set off a firecracker next to her ear and she wouldn’t have heard it.

I, on the other hand, sat at my desk with nothing to do. Attempting to solve the algebra problem would’ve been ridiculously futile. I knew that and Mr. Williams knew it, too.

A few minutes into this problem-solving contest, I came up with something to do: As was the fashion in the early ‘70s, both Heidi and I wore our hair – mine brown, hers blonde – parted in the middle and very long, and as she held her face so close to her paper, her very long hair cascaded down to her left, so I, sitting to her left about a foot away, proceeded to braid the left side of Heidi’s hair to the right side of mine. She never noticed.

When I finished the long braid, I reached into my purse and pulled out a coated elastic ponytail holder and secured the end of our brown and blonde braid.

And, then, I waited.

I knew that Heidi, the math whiz, would be the first to finish the math problem, even though it was taking what seemed like forever. And, I was right. When she finished, she jumped up from her desk and flew up the aisle and to the blackboard…

…and, since I was attached, I flew along with her.

And she still had no idea that we were joined at the head by one big, brown and blonde braid.

About half-way through writing the solution out on the board, she noticed me standing very close to her left side. She looked down at our hair braided together, began laughing, and went right back to writing her solution on the board. She never missed a beat.

The rest of the class was also pretty amused, but Mr. Williams wasn’t. Heidi got the answer first and she got it right, and when she was finished, Mr. Williams put his hand on his hip, tapped his foot – as he always did when he was not amused – tried not to smile, and calmly said, “Ms. Heidi, Ms. Nina, go to the back of the class.”

As so we did. Still attached.

The lesson from that story: When there’s something you’re not good at, do something else, and do it creatively. Try the unexpected. Don’t be afraid to be noticed. Be yourself, even if someone else (in this case, poor, put-upon Mr. Williams) doesn’t get it. Other people will.

A friend of ours had observed that one of the bus drivers looked like a rat. I never saw the poor woman, but I’m assured that she looked exactly like a rodent.

That one casual comment began a literal rodent fest.

We did rodent impressions and had rodent nicknames. Heidi was Rhoda Rodentia. And she still is. We call her husband, Joe, Joey Rodent. Heidi and I began to collect cute, little mouse figurines and pretty much anything with a rat on it. Heidi never stopped and she has quite the impressive collection. When Heidi received her Ph.D, I sent her a bronze engraved desk name thingy that says Dr. Rat.

Most importantly, way back in high school, we came up with the philosophy and slogan, “Rodents Know No Limits,” and that has served us (and everyone we’ve shared this with) very well.

We’ve lived by this ever since.

No matter what the personal or professional challenge, I am fueled by the Rodents Know No Limits philosophy: Push the envelope, stay strong, and don’t give up.

And now it’s yours, too.

And you don’t even have to scrunch up your nose and put your top two teeth over your bottom lip to make the rodent face. Well, unless, of course, you want to.

* * * * *

Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.

Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.

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