MacDonald - One red paperclip: or how an ordinary man achieved his dreams with the help of a simple office supply

CONTENTS

For Mom and Dad
and everyone who made you who you are

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, dont deal in lies,

Or being hated, dont give way to hating,

And yet dont look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dreamand not make dreams your master,

If you can thinkand not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth youve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: Hold on!

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kingsnor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything thats in it,

Andwhich is moreyoull be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (18651936)

Dom and I round the corner.

People are everywhere.

Hundreds.

The whole town.

Literally.

We walk to the front of the crowd and see Bert and Pat.

We shake their hands.

I wave shyly to the crowd and the ceremony begins.

We stand for the national anthem.

Mom and Dad are right behind us.

Speeches are made, formal introductions take place.

Pat, the mayor, raises a piece of paper in the air.

Here in my right hand is the deed to the house behind us. It is my honor to hereby ask Kyle MacDonald to step forward with his trade item and sign this piece of paper to make the trade official.

The crowd claps. I step forward, and a hush falls over the crowd.

I smile and hand over my trade item.

Pat hands me a pen.

I sign the deed.

We smile.

Pat says, To make this official, it must be witnessed. Gord?

Gord, the Mountie, steps forward and signs the deed.

Pat says, Welcome to Kipling.

We cut a red ribbon with a pair of scissors.

Dom and I hold hands and walk up the stairs.

I reach out and open the front door.

I face the crowd to speak.

My lip starts to tremble.

It is so real.

So perfect.

So silent.

Dom holds my hand.

We say thank you.

We wave to the crowd.

And walk through the door.

Into the future.

I t 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. Youd 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 youd 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. Youd take that spoon to the neighbors house, and maybe theyd offer you a boot. You could then take the boot to the next neighbor and theyd 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 youd nod yes, take the microwave, and run as fast as possible to find your friends and show off your new microwave. Youd 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 cant find my antique spoon. Have you seen it anywhere? At this point youd shake your head no and shed 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 didnt matter. Suburban legend or not, it was possible. Anything was possible. And we were all about making anything possible.

We were sixteen. Wed just passed our road tests. The drivers 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 wouldnt 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 wed 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 couldnt 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, Id love to help you out, but I dont 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 at our meager little tree, hung our heads low, and watched the car in our minds go