Week 13 Storytelling: The Red Paperclip

The story begins in Belcarra, Canada, a small town outside of Vancouver. It is here, in a place that most have probably never even heard of, where Kyle McDonald called home. Now, some of you may already be familiar with this name. I know what you might be thinking, but no, Kyle has nothing to do with infamous “Golden Arches”. Actually, his story is much more interesting than extra salty fries and apple pies.

Since of the days of his youth, Kyle was always a person who had some project he was working on. Whether that was building a Lego castle, setting up a lemonade stand, or starting up his very own lawn mowing company-Kyle was always busy with something. There was something about the excitement of watching something grow and develop right in front of your eyes that turned these projects into a sort of obsession. However, although he didn’t know it, this obsession would pay off for him, in a big, big way.

It started off as a joke, really. You see, Kyle had never really liked the color red, nor did he like paperclips- they reminded him too much of school. One day, surprisingly enough, he was working on a project at home when he noticed a red paperclip sitting on his desk. His first impulse was to simply throw it in the trash bin. However, sticking true to his colors, he thought to himself “You know what? Let’s have some fun with this”.

So, Kyle took a picture of the red paperclip and posted it to the barter section of the Craigslist site in hopes that he would be able to trade it for something bigger or better. As luck would have it, a few days later Kyle was the proud new owner of a fish-shaped pen!

“That was so easy..” Kyle thought to himself, so he decided to keep on trading, always on the lookout for the “bigger and better”. Later that day, Kyle wound up trading the beloved fish pen for a hand sculpted door-knob. “Let the games begin..” Kyle thought to himself, inspired by the initial success of his latest project.

Only a handful of trades later, Kyle had wound up with a fully operational snowmobile. His friends and family could not help but laugh at how well the whole thing was going.

The snowmobile turned into a prepaid vacation, which eventually turned into a role in a real life movie..seriously, you can’t make this stuff up..

All said and done, after a series of 14 trades, Kyle had gone from owning an annoying red paperclip to inheriting a 2-story house.

Now, Kyle’s story was a big hit and all of his neighbors were eager to meet him. Coincidently, Kyle ended up falling for one of his new neighbors, to which he is now married. To this day, the couple lives “happily ever after” in their picturesque red paperclip home.

One Red Paperclip: Wiki Commons 

Author’s Note. This story is based on “The Little Gildmaster” from Francis and Thomas’ Jataka Tales. This was the first story in the reading, but I even after reading all of the other stories, it still was my favorite of the series. The story is about a young man who hears a guildmaster say that anyone who picks up a certain dead mouse in the road will become rich and enter into a happy marriage. Overhearing this, a common-folk man picks up the mouse and begins a series of trades and schemes that eventually make him wealthy. Ironically, the gildmaster who started the whole thing wound up offering his daughter’s hand in marriage to the newly rich man. I had heard this story about the paper clip before and thought it would make a good parallel. I like both of these stories because it shows how funny the world can work sometimes, but more importantly how you can create a lot out of a little with the right plan and perseverance. My story is pretty close to the actual events that took place with the red paperclip, but I did add the marriage to his neighbor as a way to make it follow the course of the original story more closely.

Bibliography. 

Title: Jataka Tales
Author: H.T. Francis and E. J. Thomas
Year: 1916

Link: Jataka Tales