North Star Writers Group

I’ve read a lot of books to my son in the last 14 months, and by far, his favorite – and truthfully, mine too – is “Time for Bed” by Mem Fox. It’s got simple rhymes, and in each, a different animal is given a childlike, understandable reason why it’s a good idea to go to bed. For example:

“It’s time for bed, little sheep, little sheep,

The whole wide world is going to sleep.”

We read it almost every night, and likely because of that, the rhymes get stuck in my head. So, when I’m having writer’s block at work, I’ve been known to recite a couple of lines from it. I decided last week that if my boss were encroaching on my cubicle, it might be a little odd for him to hear me, all sing-songy like, repeating “It’s time for bed little goose, the stars are out and on the loose.” In fact, he just might think I’ve lost it.

So, I’ve decided to adapt Ms. Fox’s rhymes and make them corporate appropriate. Corpropriate, if you will. Kind of like calling someone who never shows up for meetings “busy,” or someone who never meets deadlines “overwhelmed.”

Besides, I need a fun, memorable way to communicate to my coworkers when it’s time to do something.

Here goes:

“It’s time to end our meeting, oh miss Project Manager,

the lawyer wants to keep going, but please don’t let her.

“It’s time for my review, Mr. Boss, Mr. Boss,

please make the time I spend here worth all the cost.”

“It’s time to move on, director, and stop relying on Power Point,

if you can’t give the speech yourself, they should find another to anoint.”

“It’s time, oh corporate trainer, to get this one thing straight,

you keep saying this course will be different, and I keep taking the bait.”

Nursery rhymes are one thing, but as my son gets older, the real question is, will I be able to keep having this kind of fun? Rather than “Everybody Poops,” will I have to write a book called “Everybody Makes Us Jump Through

Hoops?”

And when he’s reading Harry Potter books in eight or nine years, will I be equating my future boss to the ever-evil Voldemort, or the understanding, challenge-presenting, self-esteem-building Albus Dumbledore? When he gets to high school, if they’re still reading “Ordinary People”, will I still be writing columns about dysfunctional organizations, or will the Steven Coveys of the world have solved all of those problems yet?

I also wonder – what about Shakespeare? I mean, I could create a whole series of sonnets on the subject of the things I love about my company and my coworkers. There is certainly enough to write. Love might be too strong a word, but some of the perks are glorious. The smell in the company gym has definitely nearly made me faint – just like dizzying love. Some of the ads I work on make my stomach do flips – not so much out of anxious anticipation, but out of the fear of such statements being attributed to me and being found out by my journalism cronies.

Also, the problem is that Shakespeare wrote whole books of sonnets. I own them. But how would I get that far, when I have yet to figure out what old English words rhyme with “product launch” and “internal newsletter”?

Perhaps I’ll go ahead and stick to nursery rhymes. After all, Mary’s lamb did follow her to school one day, much like people at work can blindly follow whoever leads them to their paycheck. I’m sure if there had been such thing as a Working Mother Goose, she would be proud.

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