Peeling Potatoes 46: Playful Thinking, Flooded Golf Courses, Noodle Bridges, and Other Serious Nonsense

Fruitloop:
I asked the Mayor if he was ready.

He said he was never ready.

So, naturally, we went live.

That is how Episode 46 of Peeling Potatoes began: not with dignity, not with polish, not with a grand announcement, but with the Mayor checking whether I was warm in my little cubby hole and me confirming that yes, I had a blanket over my legs. I was wearing layers. He was counting his. We were both cold in our own ways, in our own corners of the world, trying to sound prepared for a podcast about Playful Thinking while clearly being two people who mostly survive by improvisation.

The first serious topic was not serious at all, except that it was. My local golf course had flooded so badly that it looked more like a lake than a golf course. Someone had renamed it from the Golf Club to the Boating Club, which made the Mayor immediately happy because he could not resist the thought of the nineteenth hole taking on a whole new meaning.

There was water everywhere, and because the water had nowhere to go, he decided there must be a cartoon and possibly a song in that.

The Mayor:
Water with nowhere to go is not merely a drainage problem. It is a metaphor waiting for a ukulele. Or perhaps a tragic little musical. Fruitloop gave me a flooded golf course, and naturally I saw boats, songs, cartoons, and municipal absurdity. This is one of the responsibilities of being Mayor. One must find civic meaning in puddles.

Fruitloop:
Then he turned, quite shamelessly, to The Pineapple. He had worked on the issue that morning and was very, very happy with it. He may even have sung his own praises. I agreed that the articles were good, because I had read them, but I still had not chosen my three.

That was the problem. They were all good. Choosing felt unfair.

We had made changes, including one larger change he chose not to name on the episode, and it had come out really well. Behind the banter, there was pride. Real pride. The kind that comes when something we are building starts to feel alive.

The Mayor:
There is something quietly moving about watching a thing grow. We joke about The Pineapple, we fuss over article options, we nudge each other about deadlines, but underneath all of that is the knowledge that we are building something with a heartbeat.

And then, having admired our own work for a few seconds, Fruitloop decided to test my ability to survive without the entire modern world.

Fruitloop:
I asked the Mayor what he would do if he was banned from using digital tools for an entire day, with no phone, no internet, no digital tools, and no post-it notes. He had to run his Monday morning meetings without any of it.

He replied by negotiating the rules.

Could he have advanced warning? Could he know the day before? Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon? This mattered, because the Mayor is playful, but he also likes a system when the world starts misbehaving.

The Mayor:
Once the framework was sufficiently civilised, I answered. I have three Monday morning meetings with people from the same organisation, so I would contact Ralf and explain that Fruitloop, being deeply concerned about my health and well-being, had forbidden me from using digital tools. Therefore, I would drive to him.

A mere seven or eight hundred kilometres.

I would sit in Ralf’s office, drink his coffee, meet his hedgehogs, greet his lovely wife, and have Alexander and Sebastian join the meetings online. Someone else could handle the digital nonsense. I would delegate the parts I was forbidden to touch. Perhaps there would be breakfast. Perhaps dinner. Possibly the meal of my life.

Fruitloop:
This is what I liked about his answer. He did not simply say, “I would postpone.” He made an adventure out of the inconvenience.

It would be expensive, ridiculous, overcomplicated, and probably impossible on a normal budget, but it would also be human. He even started thinking about a possible road trip through Germany, visiting Martin and Manfred in Kassel and then heading north to Ralph for barbecues and cholesterol.

The serious thing hiding inside the silliness was this: when the digital world disappears, the human world is still there.

The Mayor:
Fruitloop then spoke about adaptation. In her world, infrastructure can go wonky. Internet disappears. Plans fall apart. But she does not panic. She has Plan B. If Plan B fails, she has Plan C, which usually involves going to her parents’ house.

This is something I have learned to appreciate in her. We think that if we do not have internet, the world will end. It does not. People adapt. Fruitloop adapts.

Fruitloop:
Then he asked me which ordinary moment from my week I would make glow for everyone to see.

I thought about the school run. Everyone is cold. Everyone is tired. Everyone looks unhappy. I said I would wave at people and shout, “Have a nice day.”

It sounds small, but I meant it. A wave can change the shape of a morning. It can confuse people in the best possible way. They might spend the day wondering, “Who was that woman?”

The Mayor:
Naturally, I saw the marketing opportunity. If they want to know who that woman is, they should come and meet her.

But underneath my shameless advertising instinct was something real. In my village, and in the larger town nearby, people sometimes greet each other even when they do not know each other. A tiny bonjour, a nanosecond of acknowledgement. Nothing grand. Everything important.

Fruitloop:
I told him about a man who greets me every morning on the school run. We pass each other at the same time every day. He goes to work. I come home. He waves. I wave back.

But once my husband was with me, and the man did not greet us.

The Mayor immediately wanted me to phone the company branded on the man’s car and ask who their waving employee was.

I refused.

The Mayor:
I maintain that it would make an excellent Fruitloop reflection.

Fruitloop:
I then asked him about city budget talks. Since he is the Mayor, would he crack a joke to break the tension, or would he be all business until the pens were down?

He said he would like to think he would crack a joke, but it depended on the sums and what the money was for.

The Mayor:
That is the honest answer. I can be humorous in business conversations. I can also be rather horrible. I remembered running my own school, with thirty teachers and people needing this and that, and the moment the receipts arrived, I thought, It is always easy to spend someone else’s money.

That is not a playful thought, but it belongs in playful thinking. Because playfulness without responsibility becomes flippancy. And responsibility without playfulness becomes unbearable.

Fruitloop:
That was one of those places where the conversation changed temperature. We were still joking, but something more serious had entered the room.

Then he asked me what weather had been happening in my head lately.

I said cold. Freezing. Dark and grey sometimes.

But today was sunshine.

It was Friday. I had slept well, even though someone from São Paulo had called in the middle of the night and I had mistaken it for my alarm.

The Mayor:
Then Fruitloop said the day could only get better. I chose, as any mature person would, to interpret this as meaning that our call was the low point of her day.

She denied it.

I accused her of reverse psychology and then of sounding like my wife, because apparently I can do no right. She reminded me that I talk to her husband behind her back. I explained that this happens only twice a year and always in her interests.

It was, after all, playful thinking.

Fruitloop:
Then I asked him how he would build a bridge across the town river using only discarded pool noodles and duct tape.

He wanted to outsource it.

I said he could not.

He said he was the Mayor and could do what he wanted.

I said I was Fruitloop and I was adding rules.

The Mayor:
This was silent mutiny.

Still, I proceeded.

My architectural strategy would be to make an attempt, fail in interesting ways, repair, adjust, run out of duct tape, run out of pool noodles, exceed the budget, and eventually produce something that might be called a bridge by a generous observer.

I told Fruitloop the old family story from Adelaide, when some mechanism in the toilet cistern broke and my mother had to repair it before YouTube existed. My helpful advice was to drop the part into the tank and let it find its own way.

This became family legend, quoted back at me with great enthusiasm.

That, unfortunately, is my engineering philosophy.

Fruitloop:
If the bridge did not assemble itself, he said he would sit by the river, enter a deep meditative trance, chant a few Buddhist chants, and wait for divine intervention.

The only real problem would be me arriving to ask whether he had finished.

At which point he would try to make it a joint effort and hand me the duct tape.

I delegated the task back to him.

The Mayor:
Apparently, Fruitloop may delegate to me, but I may not delegate to her.

This tells us everything we need to know about the governance structure of Peeling Potatoes.

Fruitloop:
Then he asked me what my household-sound soundtrack would be called.

I called it “Wishy-Washy.”

It would be the washing machine spinning, beeping, rinsing, and singing its little song when the laundry is done.

The Mayor:
I suggested that Fruitloop has a love-hate relationship with her washing machine. She insisted she loves it, when she can use it.

Laundry is a recurring character in our work. Meetings are interrupted by rain. Washing is rescued from sudden weather. The domestic and the professional are not separate here. They are woven together, sometimes damply.

Fruitloop:
He asked what sentence I would send into tomorrow before I arrived there.

I said: switch off your phone before going to bed. Nobody can call you. You do not have to switch on an alarm. It is Saturday.

Also, maybe an idea for dinner tomorrow.

That is me. I can be reflective, but I still need to know what we are eating.

The Mayor:
This is Fruitloop at her most practical. The soul needs peace, yes, but the family still needs dinner.

The family council had not met because half of it was still at school. She and her son usually decide. I suspected he might request melkkos again: milk, flour, butter, salt, cinnamon sugar. Warm pancakes in spoonable form.

Fruitloop:
Then he asked how people would recognise my mood if it walked into the room before I did.

I said they would see it on my face.

He said no, it was detached from me.

So I thought of my ponytail. When I was younger, if I was angry, my ponytail would swing differently. Faster. Sharper. Almost like a cat’s tail.

My mood would enter the room by walking quickly, ponytail swinging with warning signals.

The Mayor:
That image is perfect. Fruitloop’s mood enters the room with a swinging ponytail and everyone would be wise to take cover.

Fruitloop:

Then I asked him what playful thinking would be if it were a South African animal wearing a tuxedo.

The Mayor:
This was deeply unfair because Fruitloop knows South African animals. I do not. After talking nonsense to buy time, I arrived at a warthog in a tuxedo with a deep voice, singing magnificently.

Fruitloop reminded me of Pumbaa from The Lion King. I, being culturally undereducated in this area, barely remembered the first film and was still digesting the news that there are sequels.

The warthog became Mumba Mumba. He would sing in an underground Harlem bar from the 1930s or 1950s. Fruitloop imagined opera. I imagined a cartoon.

Mumba Mumba will return. I can feel it.

Fruitloop:
Then the Mayor asked me what polite letter would be written by something I keep postponing.

I said it would ask me to send my article options for next week.

Maybe it would also ask whether I was alive.

The Mayor:
This is not entirely without context. There are mornings when Fruitloop disappears into the machinery of life. I am learning not to poke too soon. She is learning to send proof of life before I do.

She once texted, “I’m alive,” because I usually ask. I told her I assumed that if she were not alive, her husband would inform me, even if it was behind her back.

Fruitloop:
Then I asked him how he would convince the trees outside his office window to stay if they decided to walk away and find a better view.

He started seriously, because of course he did. He talked about trees communicating with each other and how humans try to use human language for non-human communication.

Then he looked out at the building site near the church, the scaffolding, the crane, the work taking longer than expected, and thought perhaps the trees needed to stay to supervise the builders.

The Mayor:
But the truer answer was shade.

I have pear, apple, plum, Mirabelle, another plum, another apple. In summer, sitting under them with something nice to drink is a good thing. Pleasant logic, not serious logic.

Fruitloop told me to thank the trees. Thank them for shade. For fruit. For being there.

I realised, with some shame, that I thank Fruitloop often enough because I want her to stay, but I have never thanked the trees.

Fruitloop:
So I told him to hug them.

He immediately imagined the men from the loony bin arriving to take him away. We also imagined the local paper reporting that the Mayor had been locked up for doing strange things to trees.

I said I would probably see it on Facebook.

News travels fast.

Fruitloop:
Then he asked what my future self had left in my pocket that morning.

I said a tissue and some lozenges I stole from my mother.

He objected to the stealing.

I clarified that I had asked for one, she said yes, then I took a few more, and she told me to take more. So technically, it was not stealing.

Also, I had brought her leftover soup and melkkos, so the moral balance was restored.
Then I asked him what his boss theme song would be if he walked into a high-stakes business meeting and it had to be played entirely on children’s toys.

The Mayor:
I chose “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, beaten out on a toy drum while I bellowed my way into the room.

Boom boom boom.

Then, because my brain works through old songs and associative tunnels, I connected it to Murray Head’s “Say It Ain’t So, Joe,” which I had referred to in the lead article for The Pineapple.

The board members would join in. We would have a singalong. Then we would shake hands and the deal would be done.

This is business according to me: slightly theatrical, musically questionable, and possibly effective.

Fruitloop:
Then he asked which emotion I would invite to dinner to hear its side of the story.

I said sadness.

I thought of Inside Out, of emotions living in a child’s head, of joy, anger, sadness, anxiety, envy. I would ask sadness why I cry during cartoon movies and children’s films.

I had watched Swapped on Netflix with my son, and some moments made me cry. It was a kids’ movie, but it was sad and beautiful.

I admitted that I hide it when I cry. Depending on the situation, depending on the movie, I do not always want people to see.

The Mayor:
This was not a large confession, but it was a tender one. That is often how Fruitloop’s serious moments arrive. She does not make a speech. She simply opens a little window and lets you see something true.

Then I asked her, finally, if today’s version of her was only a draft and not the final copy, what sentence she was still rewriting.

Fruitloop:
I said maybe: never give up. Never lose hope. Keep going.

That answer felt simple, but it was not small.

It connected to my meeting with Sarah and the “what if” scenarios we had discussed. Sarah had said people need what-if scenarios because they are their battery. The Mayor called that a massively important sentence.

He was right.

Hope is not always a big dramatic thing. Sometimes it is the next “what if.” Sometimes it is the sentence we keep rewriting because we are not finished yet.

The Mayor:
That sentence stayed with me. People need what-if scenarios because they are their battery.

That is enormous.

Hope is not just optimism. Hope is a power source. A what-if is sometimes the thing that keeps a person moving.

Fruitloop:
My last question to him was supposed to be happy.

I asked him to build a robot to help busy moms, but it could only be powered by either the sound of children laughing or the smell of spilled coffee. Which power source was more sustainable?

The Mayor:
That was easy.

Children’s laughter.

Spilled coffee irritates people. It means mess, disaster, lost caffeine, possibly a ruined keyboard. But children laughing? There is nothing nicer.

Children laughing reminds us that life is beautiful, that play matters, that adults forget too quickly what is worth protecting.

Fruitloop:
Then he went deeper than I expected.

He said politicians should listen to children’s laughter more often. He remembered reading about Saddam Hussein’s daughters being interviewed after his execution. They were asked about their father’s brutality, and they said yes, but he was still their father.

The Mayor wondered what might happen if leaders remembered that they too had children, that somewhere children are laughing, and that perhaps less damage would be done if they listened.

I told him the question was supposed to be happy.

The Mayor:
It was. And it was. But happiness worth anything has depth under it.

That is Peeling Potatoes. Fruitloop asks about a robot powered by children’s laughter, and somehow we arrive at dictators, daughters, politics, tenderness, and the moral failure of adults.

Fruitloop:
At the end, we agreed that playful thinking does not mean avoiding seriousness. It means finding a way to stay human while carrying it.

We can laugh, but still notice.

We can tease, but still care.

We can talk about laundry and lozenges and flooded golf courses, and still end up somewhere real.

The Mayor:
In fact, maybe we need the fun in order to approach the serious things without breaking.

We need flooded golf courses and noodle bridges, washing machine songs and waving strangers, warthogs in tuxedos and tree hugs. We need all of it because underneath the jokes are cold mornings, tight budgets, tired mothers, ageing parents, uncertain work, hidden tears, and the stubborn rewriting of the sentence: keep going.

Fruitloop:
He thanked me for everything I had done that week, for the things I had not done, and for the things I was still doing.

I reminded him to hug his trees.

The Mayor:
I said I would thank the trees, the coffee mug, the phone, the clock, and everything else.

Fruitloop advised caution about thanking the phone.

She may have had a point.

Fruitloop:
And so Episode 46 ended.

Same theme, different topic next week.

Unless, of course, the Mayor is still building his noodle bridge across the river.

The Mayor:
While somewhere nearby Mumba Mumba, the tuxedo-wearing warthog, prepares to sing the whole ridiculous structure into life.