Minus Drei wünscht sich

When my son badly wanted to have a cat, a big discussion ensued at the dinner table over the next weeks. “Who will feed it?”, “Who will clean the kitty-litter?”, etcetera. Maybe there is a story in there, I thought after our umpteenth round of discussions. A story that helps him understand that foresight is needed before such a decision is made. I jotted down a story about a child who really, really wants a pet and parents who say - “We know that we will wind up being the ones who have to take care of it.” Frankly, I found the idea rather lame after I put it down and forgot about it. Several months later, as I was traveling by train, I leafed through my notebook and came across that old idea. I remember gazing out of the window at the passing landscape and suddenly I knew what to do.

Retrospectively my subconscious had probably continued to work on the story, because I realized that the story needed a surprising twist. It was boring because it was so predictable. I wondered what the twist could be, I asked myself - what is the most surprising thing that could happen in my story. And then I had an idea: I would simply turn things around. The pet becomes the owner of the human, and the human becomes the pet. I wrote the story with my son in mind and remembering that he, like many little boys, loved dinosaurs, I turned the animal into a little dinosaur, called Dinomite. Now Dinomite does everything to try and convince his parents to allow him to have a pet. He pet-sits the tyrannosaurus across the street, a stegosaurus and a triceratops, no easy task and rather stressful.

So Dinomite comes to the conclusion that a pet is way too much work and he is relieved not to have one. In the meantime his parents have heard from the neighbors what a great job he has done. So to Dinomites horror they have gotten him a pet. He is very happy when he sees that it is a tiny little cave-girl called Lucy and they soon become the best of friends. This became the first of a ten part series and as you can see, it all began with a very simple idea that I added a little twist to.