Call Me Sonic

December 10, 2010 | Comments (2)

When Grey was little, one of his favorite stories to hear--and one of my favorite ones to read--was Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. What could be more charming than a hedgehog who does ironing? Potter based Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, considered to be one of her most positive characters, on her own pet hedgehog and a Scottish washerwoman.

Today, my nephew Indigo loves Sonic the Hedgehog--to the extent that when we were last in Texas, he wouldn't answer to his own name. "Call me Sonic," he'd sternly correct us.

And now Muriel Barbery's French novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog is charming grown-ups everywhere. (Thank you, Faye, for the gift!)

I guess hedgehogs just have perennial, irresistible appeal.

So you can see why I'm excited to be reading The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle to children this morning at Indigo Bridge Books--in the company of a real live hedgehog! It's part of the bookstore's indiZoo program, which brings live animals (with an expert handler) into the store, so preschool children can learn about them. This morning's program runs from 10 to 11:30 a.m. (but you can drop in and out), so if you're in Lincoln and have little kids--or are simply a geek for hedgehogs yourself, like I am--please come down to the Creamery Building (isn't that a wonderful address?) and join us!

Here's my quotation du jour, from an interview with filmmaker David O. Russell about his new movie The Fighter. The passage has nothing to do with hedgehogs but everything to do with human interactions (think of your workplace--and maybe your family--and maybe your intimate relationship?):

That's the most beautiful thing that I like about boxing: you can take a punch. The biggest thing about taking a punch is your ego reacts and there's no better spiritual lesson than trying to not pay attention to your ego's reaction. That's what takes people out of the fight half the time. They get hit and half the reaction is your ego is saying, I cannot believe that person just lit me up, how humiliating. And what a fighter has to do . . . is they kind of just go. [He mimes ducking and getting up.]

This passage also has everything to do with creative persistence. Rejection, ego pain, harsh criticism, setbacks, failure: they're part of the game.

You wanted this. You chose it. Get back up.

Comments:

Faye said:

Ah, how I wish I could have been there to hear you read that story and to meet a live hedgehog! I read every Beatrix Potter book when I was a child. I can still picture the shelf they were on in the tiny little library next to the three-room schoolhouse in our town.

And I think I am going to paste your last paragraph on the wall near my desk:

"You wanted this. You chose it. Get back up."

December 11, 2010 1:02 AM

Barbara said:

I think I will tattoo it to my forehead, backwards, so I can read it every morning.

Or maybe just paste it on the bathroom mirror..

December 11, 2010 2:26 AM