One Red Paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved His Dreams With the Help of a Simple Office Supply - Softcover

Macdonald, Kyle

 
9780307353160: One Red Paperclip: Or How an Ordinary Man Achieved His Dreams With the Help of a Simple Office Supply
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0307353168 ISBN 13: 9780307353160
Verlag: Three Rivers Pr, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

A hilarious, irreverent account of one's man's odyssey in search of his dreams describes how the author used a series of trades around the globe to barter a single red paperclip for a house in Saskatchewan. Original. 30,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kyle MacDonald first posted one red paperclip in July 2005 and has since become one of the most recognized Internet celebrities on the planet. In addition to continuing to trade for bigger and better objects, Kyle has planted more than 100,000 trees around the globe and delivered over 1,000 pizzas but has eaten only 1 scorpion. His previous publisher was Kinko s.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

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. You’d 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 you’d 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 you started with.

For example, you could start with a spoon. You’d take that spoon to the neighbor’s house, and maybe they’d offer you a boot. You could then take the boot to the next neighbor and they’d say, “Hey! 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?”

At this point you’d nod yes, take the microwave and run as fast as possible to find your friends and show off your new microwave. You’d 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, “Hey, I can’t find my antique spoon. Have you seen it anywhere?” At this point you’d shake your head no and she’d say, “And do you know anything about that smelly old microwave in the garage?”

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 didn’t matter. Suburban legend or not, it was possible. Anything was possible. And we were all about making anything possible.

We were sixteen. We’d just passed our road tests. The driver’s 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 wouldn’t 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 we’d 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 couldn’t find a toothpick, so we “found” 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, “Yes?” 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, “Sorry, guys, I’d love to help you out, but I don’t have a use for a second Christmas tree.” 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 our meager little tree, hung our heads low, and watched the car in our minds go poof. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and said, “Maybe try next door? Good luck!”

We walked off and looked at the tree. It was too late at night to play Bigger and Better. We’d try next door tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow had next door written all over it. Tomorrow had “car” written all over it.

But we never played Bigger and Better tomorrow.

We quit because Bigger and Better wasn’t as easy as we expected it to be. That was ten years ago. Ten years had passed since that night we’d played Bigger and Better. So many things had happened since then. I’d finished school, traveled, met new people, worked all over the world, and experienced so many things. I even shook Al Roker’s 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 wasn’t a setting sun smoldering over the remains of a freshly annihilated evil alien civilization or a windswept seashore 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.

I’d 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. She’d found a job at a hospital as a dietician soon after that. We’d 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 “between jobs.” I’d been “between jobs” for almost a year now, 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? I’d just stared at a brick wall for the better part of an hour. I’d nearly wasted an entire afternoon. I remembered the job at hand. My résumé. My cover letter. My future. That whole get-a-job thing.

Rent was due soon, and I couldn’t sponge off Dom for another month. I’d sponged for a few months. It had to stop. It was my turn to provide. I looked at the résumé on my computer screen.

Motivational words from my high school business education teacher rang out in my mind. She’d say, “You need to sell yourself to a potential employer. You need to showcase your skills.” She’d then pull out an overhead projector slide and show us how to implement the five secrets of the perfect résumé. And boy did those five secrets work! We all had jobs at fast food joints in less than a week. When you’re sixteen, a bagful of “free” 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 didn’t get...

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Verlag
Three Rivers Pr
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307353168
ISBN 13 
9780307353160
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
310
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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