A friend of mine told me something so amazing, I had to look it up to see if it was true.

In 1960, a series of experiments were done with flatworms in which a bunch of flatworms were taught where to find food. This was news all on its own, as the flatworm is not a species known for its scholastic aptitude. But that wasn’t the interesting part.

It got interesting when the educated flatworms were ground up and fed to flatworms who had no idea where the food was and, miraculously, the newly fed flatworms found food, guided by some internal knowledge given to them by their cannibalized brethren.

These studies were done before I was born, so I am probably the last person to learn that you can get smarter by eating someone who knows more than you.

I’m not sure what practical application this has for my life, but it leads me to believe that we really have no clue where our good ideas come from.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I am writing a book and I have no idea where the book came from. Traditional wisdom says we’re supposed to have an outline and develop characters and preferably do this all in advance so we know exactly where we’re headed before we begin writing.

My experience has been nothing like that.

I woke up with the trace of a story in my head -- an idea would be overstating it. I’m guessing I felt a little like that flatworm, with just a vague idea of where I ought to be going.

I’m not smart enough to be a researcher, and I suspect people will know a lot more about these things after I’m dead, but I sincerely believe in the flatworm principle.

For the record, I am not recommending cannibalism. But I am 100% convinced that our best ideas are probably not entirely our own -- at least not in the way we’re used to thinking about getting good ideas.

We like to dismiss intuition or a “sixth sense.” It’s not provable. No one has reliably located the nearest Waffle House using intuition in a double-blind study, so we don’t put much stock in it. But we also have no real understanding of where our good ideas do come from, which, considering how much we’ve studied the brain, is kind of amazing.

We study butterflies and we know they come out of the cocoon ready to fly thousands of miles without a map or instructions. No one teaches them. They have no GPS. They take no classes. But we find it unremarkable when they navigate their way to sunny southern California using a great deal of specific and detailed knowledge they never learned.

“Well, that’s butterflies!” people say.

And I have to answer, “So, why can’t I do anything half as impressive with a brain roughly 2000 times the size?”

I am not optimistic that I will ever do anything as remarkable as a butterfly.

And yet, over the course of the past year, I’ve been writing stories that seem as if they’ve already happened -- all I have to do is type them up -- and they show no sign of stopping. I am delighted, but I can’t help but wonder where these stories come from. That’s why I found this information about the flatworm so fascinating.

All I know is, in the past year, I started eating oatmeal every morning. I now think it is entirely possible that my oatmeal is smarter than I am.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

I don’t remember exactly when I took to living in stretch pants full time.

The process was gradual, I’m sure of that. I started out wearing a pair of bell-bottom stretch pants when I was writing. I didn’t actually live in them; they were part of my writing costume and they were comfy.

But as the pandemic wore on, I noticed the legs of my stretch pants were getting longer and longer until, one day, I saw they were covering my feet, and it was not a very respectable look.

“I need to upgrade my stretch pants!” I decided.

So, I bought stretch pants with pockets. Pockets in stretch pants are completely useless because you can’t put anything in them without it looking as if you have a growth on your leg. A credit card makes a bump. A key looks like the beginnings of a tumor.

But the pockets signaled that these stretch pants were almost like regular pants. They just stretched. They were certainly less disreputable looking than the stretch pants that covered my feet. I started wearing them most of the day.

In the late afternoon, I take my hike and that’s when I put on my second pair of stretch pants.

“There’s nothing wrong with hiking in stretch pants!” I remind myself. “These are athletic stretch pants!”

My hiking stretch pants look nothing at all like the stretch pants I just took off because they are not bell-bottoms and they don't have pockets. I wear them exclusively on my hike, and they are a little worn out because dogs jump up on them and bushes snag them. You would certainly never mistake them for my regular stretch pants, the ones I wear the rest of the day.

But one day I got home from my hike, took a hot bath and thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to just slip into something comfy like ... maybe stretch pants?”

That was when I brought out my old stretch pants, the disreputable ones that cover my feet, and put them on.

“I can look a little disreputable in the evening!” I figured.

These stretch pants are not as tight as the stretch pants with pockets, and they are a bit heavier, which is nice on a cool night. I think of them as my “casual stretch pants,” and I wear them as I make my dinner and lounge about in the evening.

Then one night while getting ready for bed, I put on my nightgown and I had an epiphany. “What I need is nighttime stretch pants!”

I wouldn’t wear my stretch pants with pockets, of course. That would be ridiculous. I wouldn’t wear the tight stretch pants that I wear on my hike and dogs jump all over, nor would I need anything as substantial as my casual evening stretch pants.

I found a pair of stretch pants that were loose and made of a lighter fabric and, I am here to tell you, paired with a nightgown, they are the perfect pajamas.

So now I move through my day, from one pair of stretch pants to the next, marking the movement of the sun across the sky like a sundial by changing into a different pair of stretch pants -- pants that might appear (to the untrained eye) strikingly similar in appearance.

There’s talk that we all may be able to get out and about more in the near future. Of course, I’m delighted. But it does seem like a bit of a shame since I just perfected my stretch pants lifestyle.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

Dax stared at me in disbelief. I am the Treat Lady, and I had no treats. It was inexplicable.

Dax is one of my regular customers. He is a young black dog with a lot of energy. His sister, Zia, is a little older and has the uncanny ability to find me with or without her owner anywhere in the vicinity. On this particular day, Dax was with his owner on a run and he was beside himself to suddenly encounter the Treat Lady, without even the help of his resourceful sister. Dax was over the moon. That’s when I discovered I had no treats.

We’ve had the kind of weather that makes it hard to dress for my daily hike. If the wind is blowing or the sun goes behind a cloud, the temperature becomes irrelevant, so I’ve been dressing warmer than necessary then peeling off what I don’t need. That’s what I was doing when I lost my “treat bag.”

In reality, my treat bag is some sort of tattered old passport bag, I believe. It hangs around my neck and is the perfect size for a little notebook, a pen, a couple of business cards, and a small Ziplock bag just large enough to hold eight dog treats. A seven-dog day is the record, so I feel safely provisioned with eight treats.

But somehow in the shedding of my bright red sweater, the treat bag went flying and I didn’t even notice. I continued to walk until I encountered Dax and discovered, to my consternation, I no longer had any treats.

I was not going to walk back 2 miles to fetch that old bag.

I had already harvested all the good ideas out of the notebook. I would lose six treats and a serviceable pen. I knew, with those treats inside, some critter would likely make off with my bag. No great loss, I figured.

“I’ll give you an extra treat when I see you next,” I told Dax. He was still staring at me uncomprehendingly. The Treat Lady was failing in her one and only duty.

An hour after I got home, my phone rang.

“Is this Carrie?”

“Um, yes.”

“This is Laura. You know me and my dog, Miley.”

I searched my mental database for a Laura and Miley and came up blank. This does not mean much. I have been giving out dog treats for 10 months now. I usually remember the names of the dogs, but I frequently forget the names of their owners.

“I’ve got your bag!”

“My treat bag!”

“Yes! My son-in-law found it on the trail.” We arranged for her to hang it on her doorknob so I could pick it up the following day.

I picked up my bag and two days later, I saw Dax again. He was with Zia and they both got a treat from my old treat bag. (Although I reneged on my promise of an extra treat because Zia would never have understood.)

And I realized that, while my treat bag has seen better days, its worth is hard to measure.

The dog owners think I am doing something nice for their dogs when it is entirely the other way around. I don’t have a dog. And yet, every day, dogs kiss me on the face and nuzzle my hand and smile at me in that way that only dogs can. I am enriched beyond measure -- all for the price of a treat.

I left Dax and continued my hike. It ended up being a six-dog day. It was a very good day.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION