“Oh, you know,” she shrugs, “That kind of medium-sized dog. Not the little ones that fit in your purse.”

“I don’t have a purse,” I say.

“Oh Daddy! The kind that don’t grow taller than your knee. You know, ‘below-knee’ dogs?” She puts her hand about a foot-and-a-half from the ground.

“We’re still not getting a dog,” I say, stifling a laugh.

“I know,” she says knowingly. “But when we do, we’re getting a ‘below-knee’ dog.”

I’m going to tell you a story. A true story. That I wrote. Last night. I hope you like it.

The working title was There Is No Box. But that was too pedantic and I’ve used it before. The real title was supposed to be Mr. Tits Goes To Jail, but I thought that it might be too alienating. So now I call it:

Don’t Be The Ass In Assumption

Once upon a time, human beings started making assumptions to function better in this world. When we looked at the information, the situations, and the people around us, we accepted certain things to be true without explicit proof. For instance, if a random driver cuts us off we assume he is an asshole that doesn’t know how to drive, yet we’ve never seen his driving record or his license test scores. If an ambulance cuts us off with lights and sirens blaring, we suppress our road rage because we assume they must be saving someone’s life, even though we see no hard evidence of a patient inside.

In advertising, we call these assumptions personas, or demographics, or even best practices. We make assumptions based on what has happened before. And generally it works out pretty well.

Our brains love assumptions. They gets very comfortable with assumptions. A little too comfortable. Assumptions mean less work. They are more efficient use of brain power. Our brain treads along these same cozy neural pathways again and again and again until they are well worn and grooved. When similar situations arise, our brains default to this groove, and it’s associative memories, information, and assumptions.

This is very important to note when you work in advertising and need to think about products and marketing and channels in innovative ways. We need to make assumptions all the time. But it is important that we don’t make limiting assumptions, assumptions where we overlook an opportunity that was right in front of us.

This is extra-ordinarily important when you are charged with national security. The CIA, for example, makes assumptions all the time about the state and stability of the world. But a limiting assumption can mean the different between life and death, and the safety of thousands of civilians. As a matter of fact, in a training manual called Psychology of Intelligence Analysis by Richards J. Heuer, Jr., there is a pertinent quote from Frank Zappa: “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.”

I want to tell you a story about assumptions. It’s a bit of a fable, with a moral and everything, but it’s also entirely true. I know this because it happened to me.

In 1992 I got on an airplane bound for Toronto from Winnipeg. I was in my twenties, and hadn’t done much traveling yet, so I opted for a window seat. There were two empty seats to my left. Aside from a couple right in front of me, the surrounding seats were vacant. As it was a red-eye flight, we were all hoping that no one else would get on the plane so we might be able to stretch out and get some sleep.

But just when it looked like we might be closing the doors, a sudden band of rowdy bikers burst onto the plane. They surrounded the couple and me without decorum or social niceties. They were all very excited as they stuffed leather jackets into overhead compartments, gave each other inappropriate gestures and hand slaps, and asynchronously collapsed into their seats. One beside the couple. Two beside me.

From the time they got on the plane to the time they sat down I had taken in a lot of information. They were bikers from the same MC (That means Motorcycle Club for those of you that don’t watch Sons of Anarchy). They were on their way from Winnipeg to Cuba, via Toronto. They were going to paaaaar-ty-hardy. That party had already started.

When everyone was strapped in and the plane began to taxi, one of their crew yelled out, “Everybody ropes…”, and the rest joined in unison, “Everybody rides!” Then there was a lot of whooping and hollering. I think this is cowboy or bad-boy slang for all being in it together. I’m not sure. But they were yelling it a lot.

A statement I am much more familiar with is from Thomas Edison. He famously stated, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” I quote this a lot when I talk about creativity and how much action, or effort, needs to be put into it. The American Motorcycle Association allegedly used the same ratio for their own statement that “99% of motorcyclists were law-abiding citizens.” This prompted Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMGs!) to start referring to themselves as “1%ers”.

You see, motorcycle gangs don’t like being told what to do by polite society. For instance, Mr. Tits, the biker sitting beside me had an entire duffle bag filled with little mini-bar liquor bottles at his feet. (It was before 9/11 obviously.) Bikers make their own rules. Some people just intuitively know this. They guy sitting in front of me apparently did not.

As soon as the plane leveled and the captain turned off the seatbelt sign, this man stood up and announced that it was too loud. It was late and some people on this plane were trying to get some sleep. He suggested, in a paternal tone, that everyone ‘keep it down.” And for a second or two, after he sat down, there was stunned silence, like when a man in a white hat steps through the swinging doors of a Western saloon.

“Everybody ropes!” cut the silence from somewhere, and they all joined in. “Everybody rides!” Mr. Tits then howled like a banshee before leaning in real close and whispering through the crack in the seats in front of me, “When we land in Toronto…” This is when the death threats started.

Now, when a CIA operative is being trained in the fine art of assumption busting, they are presented with the problem of 9 Dots. It’s a simple problem that looks exactly like this:

They are asked to connect all the dots in four straight lines (or less) without out lifting their pencil. Many people cannot do it. They always take five strokes. Their solution looks like this:

They are making one very limiting assumption. Can you guess what that is? They are assuming that they are confined to the perimeter of the dots, that they cannot go ‘outside’ of the nine existing dots. As soon as you eliminate this assumption that you must stay inside an imaginary border, the solution presents itself:

But what I love about this manual is that the author isn’t satisfied with this clever solution. You’ve solved the puzzle, but what if you remove more assumptions? Can you take it even further? The second limiting assumption is that you must draw a line through the centre of each dot. If you remove this assumption, suddenly what seemed impossible in four is doable in three!

Would you believe there is one more? Would you believe you can connect these nine dots with one straight line? Well you can, if you remove the limiting assumption that your paper must stay on a two-dimensional plane. If you took the piece of paper this test was printed on and rolled it into a cylinder, you can connect all the dots in one straight line. What used to seem impossible at four strokes has now been reduced to one.

Now that you’ve gotten this far, you can imagine other crazy scenarios where you might fold the paper so that all the dots are overlapping, and then stab it with a sharp pencil. Or you might tear the paper into three strips of three dots, laying them end to end, and drawing one straight line through them all. Or even imagining a pencil so large that all night dots are covered in one short stroke.

Limiting assumptions can prevent us from seeing solutions to problems because our brain cannot get past them. Our brain is literally stuck in a rut. One of the exercises in the CIA Manual is called Thinking Backwards. You imagine that you are in the future and that an unlikely event has already occurred. You are now ‘looking back’ from that future to figure out how it could have happened. This gets you out of your rut, because you are imagining how something might happen instead of whether that something will happen. This reversal is enough of a disruption to get you ‘thinking outside of the box’. The CIA uses this technique to plan for unlikely scenarios, and to understand which are the most plausible.

I employed this technique of Thinking Backwards when the bikers first got on the plane. I didn’t know it was called that at the time, but I imagined a very unlikely scenario: that a double honours english philosophy student could endear himself to a group of bikers so they would protect him instead of bully him.

How did I do this? I employed an old trick my Mom had talked about: if you ever have trouble with your car on a road trip, always walk up to the biggest, meanest looking guy on the lot, preferably a biker, and ask them for help. Suddenly their machismo is dependent on whether or not they can fix your problem. You had the balls to ask them, and now they are your protector. She said it always worked. Of course, she was an attractive, tall, blonde.

I was a skinny, tattoo-less geek. But after I saw my neighbor’s duffle bag of booze, I knew what to do. When the stewardess came by (they weren’t called flight attendants then), I ordered a drink. When she asked me for I.D. (I looked sixteen when I was twenty-one) I pretended I couldn’t find it. The bikers thought this was hilarious. I was forced to order a Coke. Sure enough, the biker beside me waited for the stewardess to pass and then scooped out a mini bottle of Jack Daniels. As he poured the full contents into my Coke, he introduced himself. He was a business owner, going on vacation to Cuba with his brother (sitting beside him) and some friends. He had a lot of friends, he said, because he owned a strip-club in Winnipeg. “They call me Mr. Tits,” he said, and invited me to come visit any time. I wouldn’t have any trouble getting served at his club.

And that was how Mr. Tits became my best friend, and the worst enemy to the couple in front of us. In between the friendly banter and the endless open bar, he would lean forward and switch into evil mode, talking in his lowest, meanest, monotone voice into the crack between the seats. “When we land I’m going to do this, that, and the other thing to your face, and then do that other thing again.” This went on for some time.

Then Mr. Tits suddenly sat up tall in his seat, prairie-dogging, looked for the stewardess. When he saw her cart was at the farthest point from his row, he dug deep into his bag and pulled out a piece of tin foil. He unwrapped it quietly and carefully, like it was candy he’d smuggled into a movie theatre. Inside was a heap of dry, white powder, about the size of a large tea bag. Prairie-dogging once more for safety, he proceeded to lift the foil up to his nose and snort loudly. A light dusting of powder landed on my pants, like a thin coating of icing sugar. I didn’t work in advertising yet, so cocaine was still a big shock to me

Once his second ego kicked in, Mr. Tits got sick of threatening the man, and started threatening the woman. “You’ve got a pretty girlfriend,” he said in a menacing tone. “She won’t be so pretty when I’m through with her.” Then he proceeded to describe the vile and terrifying things he would do to her as soon as they got off the plane.

I had switched to coffee by this time, which was instantly partnered with little bottles of Kahlua or Bailey’s, despite my bravest protests. Mr. Tits was going to help me stay drunk until the bitter end. Friends don’t let friends get sober on a red-eye. I just hoped my parents, who were coming to pick me up at the airport would understand that I got this drunk for safety reasons.

The combination of liquor, pop, and coffee finally sent me to the back of the plane to pee. Stumbling past the two bikers and tripping on airplane bottles of booze, I finally got to the bathroom, which was occupied. I tried my best to stand still in the aisle, which was pitching and yawing from my perspective, despite the lack of turbulance. It was then I overheard two flight attendants talking behind a navy-blue curtain at the back of the plane. “We’ll need to tell people to stay seated after we land.” said one of them. “First we have to let the RCMP board the plane.” Through the space in the curtain I could see the other was holding a napkin with a message scrawled on it. “The RCMP?” “We have to take this note seriously. The captain has radioed for security.”

The bathroom door unlocked loudly and a passenger exited. The two flight attendants went into hushed, unintelligible tones. I went to the bathroom and tried to sober up. I splashed cold water on my face before going back to my seat. When I got there, Mr. Tits was still threatening the man who had hushed his posse. This had been going on now for many hours. When he and his brother saw me, they smiled knowingly, stood up, and let me get by. There was still cocaine residue on the edge of my seat.

When the plane finally landed, the flight attendant told us there was a delay at our gate, and to please stay seated. I knew what was coming. And suddenly I felt really nervous. I wondered if you could get a contact high from brushing coke off of your pants. I wondered if I was going to get in trouble for being too drunk. I wondered if the man in front of me might mistakenly believe it was me who had been uttering the threats all along. I felt sick and paranoid.

When the doors opened, two RCMP officers stepped onto the plane. They were looking for someone. When they got to my row, they stopped. One of them looked  directly at me, and I swear he smirked. Then he looked at Mr. Tits for a few seconds. It felt like forever. Mr. Tits sat perfectly still. The plane was dead silent.

“Sir,” the officer pointed directly at Mr. Tits. “Come with us. You are under arrest for allegedly issuing death threats… to a minor.”

And that’s when it hit me— Mr. Tits had made a critical limiting assumption. He thought the woman sitting directly in front of me was the man’s wife. In truth, she was his daughter! A potential misdemeanor had turned into a felony offense. Mr. Tits was going to jail. And he was going to ruin his motorcycle club’s vacation. After Mr. Tits was escorted off the plane, one of the bikers turned to the other tough guy in my row. “When your brother gets out of jail…” began his threat, “…we’re going to kill him.”

I guessed the weren’t in the mood for roping and riding anymore. The man in front of me waited until the bikers had all left the plane before gathering his daughter’s belongings from the overhead bin. When she stood up and turned, I could see she looked no more than thirteen. She had red, puffy eyes like she’d been crying.

As it turns out, the man in front of me on the plane would have given the same ‘shush’ speech to anyone being rowdy on that flight. He wasn’t being judgmental, he was being a protective Dad. He was trying to create an environment that would allow his daughter to get some rest.

This Dad had found a straight-lined solution to his complicated problem. It took patience, but it worked. Instead of assuming that he was surrounded and out-numbered, instead of accepting the limitation of being boxed in by bikers, instead of accepting intimidation and fearing reprisal, he got creative. He wrote on a napkin, something that creative directors do all the time. He then slipped it to the stewardess in such a way that it remained unknown to his enemies. He kept quiet for the remainder of the the flight, and in the end he won.

In a way, so did I. On my way off the plane I tripped over the duffle bag. Mr. Tits had carelessly left it on the plane during his escorted exit. It was still quite full of little golden bottles, and lightly sprinkled with cocaine like a powdered donut. It might have been because I was still drunk but I picked it up and stuffed it into my own carry-on. I just figured he wouldn’t miss it. Luckily for me, that wasn’t a limiting assumption.

The End.

R2-D2 and Chewbacca play Dejarik while C-3PO looks on, in Star Wars IV: A New Hope

One the strongest cinematic memories from my childhood is from Star Wars (surprise surprise). C-3Po R2-D2 and Chewbacca are playing a type of holographic chess on the Millennium Falcon, passing the time as they speed through space. The game pieces move and interact with each other and— even cooler— they fight! I wanted one of these Dejarik sets, and dreamed of a time when holographic games and toys became a reality.

Judging by the last few months on the internet, that time is well on its way. Augmented Reality is set to bring those holographic moments to anyone with a computer and a webcam, or even a mobile phone. Last night I gave my kids a printout of the newest Star Trek poster and told them to hold it up to the computer screen (at Experience the Enterprise). I watched their surprised faces when, on screen, they were suddenly holding a diminutive replica of a three-dimensional spaceship. Both of them loved the experience, and immediately started testing it’s boundaries: how much could they bend the paper, how far away could they stand, how close could they bring the paper into the camera. It was amazing to watch them instinctively push the limits of the technology. My son kept looking at the computer and then back at the paper he was holding, trying to figure out why it was invisible in real life.

Sebastian, Age 4, Experiences Augmented Reality for the First Time

They would have played with the USS-Enterprise for hours if I had let them, just like a brand new toy. This particular AR could fire torpedoes and phasers, and simulate flying at warp speed. How many other toys have that ability? It’s still a bit clunky and you really tire of holding a piece of paper up to a screen for a long time, but for a technology that is just begining to come out of its shell, it’s a wonderous experience.

I’m looking forward to the LucaArts AR gameboard that let’s me play Dejarik on my coffee table. Are you listening George?

Update: Here are a few more bonus pictures:

When I was in University, I didn’t have a mobile phone, email, or internet access. Most people didn’t. There was no TXTing, no IMing, no poking people on Facebook, and certainly no twittering. The way you met new and interesting people was by smoking. I’m serious. If you wanted to become friends with random cool people, you’d make sure you had a well-fueled Zippo and you’d practice opening it SHINK, lighing it KTCHSH, and closing it KHLUP.

SHINK KTCHSH KHLUP. SHINK KTCHSH KHLUP. SHINK KTCHSH KHLUP

That sound was an advertisement to people within earshot that 1) you were a fellow smoker, 2) that you had fire, and 3) that you might even have an extra cigarette. “Hey, got a light?” was the opening line to many friendships and relationships.

How you lit your Zippo was part of your personality. Some people did it one handed, some people liked to snap their fingers over the flint to create the fire magically, and others could open and light their Zippos off their jeans in one fluid motion. The crazy ones would pour a bit of lighter fluid in the palm of their hands and let it go up in a short burst.

The design of the Zippo was another expression. There were lighters from headshops with skulls and pot leaves and Harley logos. Some were monogrammed, some were gold and ornate, and most were just plain stainless steel. But they all did the job of lighting a cigarette for a fellow addict in need and sparking conversation.

Today I don’t smoke. I have an iPhone with ubiquitous internet access, email, and unlimited texting. There’s a program for every flavour of instant messaging service. There’s a decent Facebook application. And then there’s the Twitter app Tweetie: the new Zippo lighter.

Let me explain: So today, instead of wanting to be friends with social malcontents who are trying to start grunge bands, I want to be friends with geeks. Geeks know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, so there’s always something to learn or to talk about. And how do you break the ice with a cool geek? Easy. Get Tweetie for iPhone. Instead of walking up to a total stranger and asking “Got a light?” you say “Hey, aren’t you @[insert Twitter username here] who just tweeted about [insert topic here]? That was hillarious. I’m @jted.” Then you shake hands and the rest is history.

For example, at a recent Chuck Palahniuk reading in Toronto I was using Twitter to broadcast a few choice quotes from the author. Out of curiosity I used Tweetie to do a search for users also talking about Chuck. I was surprised to find 5 or 6 people in the audience broadcasting snippets of what Palahniuk was saying and what was happening in the room. A few of them had photographic avatars , and by tapping on them I could see a full-screen picture of their faces. After the show I recognized one of them talking to a group of friends. I thought it was crazy that Tweetie could transform a random stranger into someone I not only recognized, but shared a sense of humour with. I never did talk to the guy. But the point is that I could have. I was in a bit of a hurry that day…

Zippos have engraved images; Tweetie shows your avatar. Zippos smell like lighter fluid; Tweetie smells like a cheap iPhone application. Zippos attract smokers; Tweetie uses the built in GPS to find fellow Twitterers via the Nearby button. Zippos can be used for flaming parlour tricks; Tweetie’s Trends button can be used to read the collective mind of human consciousness. Now if only Tweetie could make that SHINK KTCHSH KHLUP sound…

Happy Birthday Dad!

I would. But I wasn’t that father.

Let’s imagine a separate scenario: Let’s say that over 2 years ago you worked at an ad agency that had a drug company client. Let’s say that the client sometimes had sample kits to give away to doctors. One of those kits ended up in your hands because it was extra, because it was free, and because it came with a cool bag. In this kit were a few ‘realistic’ looking items. One of them happened to be a plastic vial for disposing of insulin needles. You thought it would be cute to put them with the other items in your kid’s Fisher-Price doctor bag and forgot about it. For 2 years.

Then, one Friday on your commute home you received a strange text message from your wife. Your daughter had been caught with a vial of bio-hazardous material. Under interrogation, she told the principal that she got it from… you!

Having absolutely no memory of this vial from 2 years ago, you try desperately to figure out how your child would be in possession of bio-hazardous material. You gave blood a few months ago, but you weren’t allowed to take any of the vials home. You were in the hospital for a day last year, was it from then? Your wife was a practicing doula for a while, was it from her birthing kit? None of these options made any sense.

On your walk home, you pick up your daughter from a play date at a friend’s. You ask her if she got in trouble for bringing anything to school that day. She frowns and doesn’t want to talk about it. You press her gently. Finally she says, “It was YOUR thing! It was from YOU!”

“I know, I know,” you say. “It was entirely my fault. But it scared a few people.” Pausing, you finally ask, “What was in that thing anyway?”

“Cotton balls and hand soap, of course,” is her matter-of-fact reply.

“Of course,” you say, most relieved. Then you go home and write a long letter of explanation to the principal of the school so that everyone can relax for the weekend without visions of viral contamination.

Yup. I was that father.

Having a child has tweaked my perspective on myself. I can hardly remember what it was like NOT having a daughter. Who was I? I feel like those days were childhood, and these days are responsibility. I feel like a took my entire life for granted. All of life, for that matter. I really had no memory or concept of what it means to create life or even be life. Sometimes I look down at Madeleine’s calm little sleeping face and I think I must be an imposter, or dreaming, or perhaps tripped into an alternate universe. It’s so hard to fathom the depths of emotion and the awesome power of creating a REAL LIVE PERSON. In my mind the whole universe has been shifted, affected some way. It’s amazing. It’s like looking into an organic mirror that reflects the future and the past at the same time.

FILL OUT THOSE DONOR CARDS

Oh!
What I was going to say is that it’s so easy to take life for granted. I was out for a few minutes buying D some cucumbers and cheese for sandwiches and I caught a headline that said organ donations were way down this year. It made me feel sad. Obviously I’m on a life is precious kick right now. I’m thinking of my own mortality, and immortality– I may live forever through Madeleine just as my ancestor’s live through me.

One night, many moons ago, D and I were playing Pictionary with some friends (they know who they are). I had to draw a quick picture for heart transplant. D liked the picture so much that she made me scan it. I remembered the picture today, and thought I’d share it.

Dear friends,

Observe the extraordinary and dramatic entrance of Madeleine Zoë into this side of reality.
Born April 15th, 2002 at 3:33am, at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, big feet. 8lbs 2oz, 20.5 inches long.
Beautiful and fearless.

Madeleine has shifted all the family titles, creating:
7 Great-Grandparents (Jakob, Anna, Frank, Anne, Fran, Rod, Agnes)
1 Step-Great-Grandfather (Harold)
4 Grandparents (Ken, Val, Ted, Carol)
2 Uncles (Michael, Scott)
2 Aunts-in-waiting (Katherine, Justyna)
2 Siblings (Griffin the dog, Sabine the cat)
1 Dad (me)
and
1 Mom (Dayna)

Thank-you to midwives Patrice, Cat, Mel, doula Lisa, 2 superhero paramedics, and the staff of St. Mike’s.
We started it, but we couldn’t have done this without you.

Love Dayna & Jason and Madeleine.

For more pictures, click on Madeleine, left.

“Baby Passes First Test with 100%”
As demonstrated on the diagram (left) fetal Baby McIsaac scored perfect points in all areas. Also of note are the unmistakably life-like pencil illustrations of the placental and fetal positions, the age of the baby (40 weeks, 6 days), and it’s phenominal weight of 4549g (which equals 10.03lbs).