brainsnorkel.com

I work with a US-based manager called Jane with über-project-coordination skills.

One of Jane’s management super hero talents is a tireless ability to bring warring development groups together on the phone and gently negotiate agreement within minutes of observing email sniping or any of the other usual symptoms of project discord.

I watched too much of a TV show during my early childhood called Mr Squiggle. The show featured a puppet character called Mr Squiggle “the man from the moon” who…

…was a cheery, scatter-brained character who would often be distracted and would occasionally go for “space-walks”, and his assistant would need to calm him down to get him to focus on the task of drawing.

Mr Squiggle always had a female assistant to help him, and give the show some narrative consistency. There were several assistants during the show’s lifetime, but the assistant I remember most fondly is Miss Jane.

Even though he was easily distracted Mr Squiggle was a brilliant artist, as puppets go. He could change a piece of paper with some random-looking lines and curves into a complete picture by drawing with his pencil nose while talking about how nice the moon is this time of year.

Before starting to draw he would say “Hold my hand, Miss Jane.”

This seemed such a fitting parallel to our project (as the creative scatterbrain, Mr Squiggle) and our Ms Jane (as a stabilizing influence) that I thought I should share this parallel with her.

I was about to compose a Happy-New-Year-how’re-you-doing? email to Jane with background links to the Wikipedia article on the show when I noticed that there is also a short Wikipedia entry for Jane Fennell, the actor who was Miss Jane.

I read it and decided against drawing any parallels.

Now I think I need someone to hold my hand.