paulog · the life of paul grzymkowski - [ log.paulogy.com ]

“To be, or not to be: that is the question”
~ William Shakespeare

Life is full of questions. Many of which have plagued scientists and philosophers alike for centuries, such as: “is there life after death?”, “is there a higher power?”, and “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”. Okay, so maybe not that last one, but the point is, hundreds of these questions, from the profound to the absurd, have heretofore gone unanswered.

That is, until now.

When I was a kid my Dad and I used to play drawing games. Sometimes he would draw a primitive shape or letter and hand it to me, and I would have to turn it into something interesting. An “S” might become a snake, a square might turn into a simple house, etc. Then I would make a squiggle of my own and give it to him to finish, and we would go back and forth like that until one of us ran out of ideas or got bored. So I guess it wasn’t really much of a “game”, but I liked creative drawing so it was fun nonetheless.

Often my Dad and I would play the game on my Magna Doodle. You remember those things, right? It had a magnetic tethered pen, a couple of geometrically shaped stamps, and a slider bar that erased your work like “magic”. If yours was anything like mine it probably looked something like that picture on the right except instead of a kitty it probably had some assortment of genitalia drawn on it. Well, maybe not back then, but if you rummaged around to find yours now I bet it would. Because really, what good are creative kids’ toys if your college buddies can’t defile them with their dirty minds later in life?

Anyway, the point is I used to really enjoy drawing, and “The Line Game” as I think we called it was one of my favorites. So I was somewhat pleased when, in my Senior year high school Psych class (of all places), I was presented with the following assignment: