Pooh Day

Today, it just so happens, was A. A. Milne's birthday. The guy who wrote - among other things - the stories about Winnie the Pooh and Piglet and Christopher Robin and all of the characters in the Hundred Acre Wood. (For the record, there are also Eeyore, Rabbit, Kanga, Roo, and Owl in the theme song, while Tigger and Gopher simply show up in the stories.)

The odd thing about Milne is that he never started out to write children's books. He was a journalist (as were so many writers at the time), who decided along the way that he might like to write - you guessed it - murder mysteries.

I'm not kidding. He left journalism to write mysteries. And, for a time, he was apparently incredibly successful at them. I've read one of them ("The Red House Mystery") and although it's a very 1920s mystery - so there's an awfully lot of talking - it was quite good.

There's only one problem, though. After writing his mysteries and becoming successful at them, he decided that he didn't want to do them any more. Because he wanted to write - you'd be right, this time - tales about a stuffed bear.

His editors told him he was insane. They figured that there was no way in the world that he could make the transition. But he was adamant that he wanted to change to the other genre, and so he did.

And, while I truly did enjoy the mystery I read, I must admit that I definitely prefer the stuffed friends in Christopher Robin's bedroom.

Either way, here's to a man with imagination and the wherewithal to follow through, even when he was told he was crazy to step out of the comfort zone others had put him in.