The Wampus

This will mark my first summer in six years not working at Kiddywampus, an awesome independent toy store in Hopkins. Luckily, I’ll still be associated with the store by ghost-writing for the Wampus, some kind of benevolent monster that lives in the store and answers letters kids send in. So far the project hasn’t gotten off the ground yet, but I was able to write a couple practice responses to experiment with the voice. I tried to make my responses silly and kid-friendly, which meant I inevitably fell back on anthropomorphization. My work was deemed funny, but maybe a little too sophisticated for our target audience.

Question: Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

Peeled.

Peeled who?

There are crickets on your desk.

The Wampus's Answer: Thank you kindly for the crickets you left on my desk. I often find myself working late at night at my desk, keeping up my regular email correspondence with Santa and so forth, when I need a cricket to proofread a particular sentence with the eye for grammar and word choice that only crickets possess. But then I need to go outside, look for a cricket, convince that cricket to take time out of its busy schedule to do a bit of copy editing, and that's all just so much work! But with so many crickets on my desk, I can hardly pick up my pen without them chirping a chorus helpful suggestions! It's wonderful, if a bit disorienting when they all speak at once, we really need to work out a system for that. If I may inquire, though, who was peeled, and why were they knocking?

Question: If a train leaves Chicago and is moving 65 miles per hour towards Boston, how soon will it meet a train that is leaving Boston traveling at 70 miles per hour if Chicago and Boston are 2700 miles apart?

The Wampus's Answer: Well, it's certainly good to hear that the trains are going to meet each other! I've personally known many trains who are so exhausted by zooming around the country hauling lumber, coal, passengers, and such, and just want a few seconds to slow down and have a nice conversation with a fellow train. I bet their playdate will go well. From my experience, Chicago trains are excellent listeners while Boston trains love to tell stories, which seems like the perfect match. I do hope they slow down, though. Going at 65 and 70 miles an hour, they probably won't have much time to talk when they meet 20 hours after departing.