I Accidentally Shredded $20K

My high school sweetheart's buddy, Danny fell to his knees and begged to tape up the check for $20,000 that moments earlier, I angrily ripped to shreds.

How could I have known that the five-minute Napoleon Hill manifesting exercise I followed in his mega-bestseller, Think And Grow Rich would actually play out exactly how I innocently wrote in my little black book?

I spent the next 30 years since 9th grade trying to recreate that universal cause and effect... even though I knew as early as first grade, the power my short stories had.

So, that's what I continued doing, writing a fictional story in the little black book every time I wanted to manifest something.

This process really hit home when I did the Nepolean Hill exercise.

In my little black book I wrote:

1. I intend to have $20,000.

2. I intend to have it by my 22nd birthday.

3. I intend to have it through my writing.

That was it. I set the black book aside.

March came and went.

Then in late April 1997, I got an angry long handwritten note from my grandmother I've always called "Tutu" (ever since her friends came back from Hawaii and I was born a twin). Her note screamed like a Howler Letter in Harry Potter.

"What an inconsiderate, ungrateful granddaughter you are!"

"You never take the time to call or write!"

I couldn't believe what I was reading. Me? The one who made my very first purchase on a credit card to buy my grandmother a thoughtful gift during a public television fundraiser?

I purchased the Yanni videotape after bonding with my younger musically talented brother.

So why did she send back the videotape I bought for her April 13th birthday with a check for $20?

As if writing the note and sending the gift back wasn't enough. Why did she have to send a check? Was it to replace the cost of the gift too? What?!!

Two Aries ramming heads, that's for sure!

In my tears, I sobbed about the check for $20 dollars and her typical note, correcting my spelling and grammar in red pen.

This was too much!

That's when my boyfriend's younger 7-11 employee friend Danny offered to do my chores for a month if I signed the check over to him.

O.M.G. the guys saw it. The ripped check was $20,000, not $20.00! WTF.

It took some therapy and about a year of stubbornly never mentioning the incident.

Then one day Tutu came to visit and the unexpected $20,000 inheritance check from my late grandfather's estate was regifted to me after she saw how tirelessly my boyfriend and I worked nights and weekends gutting and rebuilding our first fixer-upper, a HUD repo home, formally inhabited by cats, dogs, and chickens.

Did I mention the "Silence Of The Lambs" style kitchen and walls, blackened from bad kerosine heaters? Someone stopped paying their electric bill!

And then there were the child-sized painted footprints on the ceiling or unicorn poster left after the foreclosure clean up. Creepy!!

I have since shared this Napolean Hill exercise and many other writing/ manifesting exercises with coaching clients over the years. They often have to go through a process of forgiveness over all the times they were cheated out of a paycheck or never got paid for their hard work or some family drama. I would script their magic financial story in my little black book and soon I owned those words given to me in 9th grade.

What words?

It all started when we were given little black books on the first day of 9th grade. What I wrote in Creative Writing came true that same week in Science lab. Out of nowhere, I jotted down notes to a short story. "The students had a quantum leap of understanding from one school day to the next. In my story, only the female student narrator and the perceptive teacher recognized the massive overnight shift of consciousness and abilities of the other students. The teacher found himself saying,

"And now for something completely different!"

Then something crazy happened, my favorite teacher of all times Mr. Lamm, recognized himself in my story a couple of days later. Steve read his Creative Writing journal entry. "Ruth is amazing. What she wrote in Creative Writing came true in science lab today! Ruth is the Writer Of Our Lives".

My real flesh and blood teacher continued how suddenly everyone in lab figured out how how to do the assignment: To inflate a balloon so it fit tight as a glove inside the flask, using nothing more than a beaker, balloon, and a straw. The day before no one got it, but the second day every lab pair figured out how to inflate the balloon inside the flask within five minutes of each other!

Hit: You have to use the straw to let out the pressure when you blow up the balloon.

My short story was inspired by "Monkey 99" where the primates on different islands or in our case, different lab tables figured out how to make the experiment work. We were similar to the first monkeys who learned how to wash the sandy sweet potatoes dropped by scientists from an aircraft. The understanding of how to wash the potatoes spread perhaps telepathically after the first island of monkeys cracked the code.

My teacher, Steve found himself amazed by the propheticness of my story and almost uttered the words of my fictitious teacher out loud,

"And now for something completely, different!"

That's when Steve dubbed me "The Writer Of Our Lives", which I continue to use in my author, coaching, marketing material to this day.

It was much later I realized this sheltered 9th grader had subconsciously lifted, "And now for something completely, different!" phrase from Monty Python's "Meaning Of Life" after being quite surprised to watch fornication for the first time in the company of the seniors, in my 9th-grade French teacher's boarding school apartment. I wasn't wearing the braids and plaid school uniform, but I might as well have been.

"It quite completed my education,"

Princess Diana said the same thing to Tim Curry a.k.a. Frank N. Furter after he asked her what she thought of "Rocky Horror Picture Show". That's the way I felt after watching "The Meaning Of Life".

Maybe the little black book that I carried from 9th grade English until now has time warp capabilities. LOL. Moments after I got my first public recognition for being a prophetic storyteller, my classmates quickly asked me to write stories about them winning the lottery! In my limited freshman wisdom, I informed them, "It doesn't work that way, Ryan."

But little did I know it did!

The fictional stories I wrote in 9th grade about a fictitious high school senior Julie winning a marine biology scholarship on a special expedition around the world manifested for me in eleventh grade when I won a Penn State summer camp Conservation Leadership scholarship through my public high school's environmental club.

Then my actual graduation present, a year later was to go on Special Expeditions Cruise to Indonesia with my grandmother/Tutu, which was literally around the world! (Yup the travel company name was the same wording I wrote in Julie's short story!)

Tutu and I traveled to 15 spice islands in 20 days ending our trip on the island of Bali. It was so beautiful sleeping in our bamboo hut under the stars with a pool of water between my grandmother and me, which she said I should have been enjoying this experience on my honeymoon. At 19 though, I was thrilled to have this magnificent, once in a life time adventure with her.

How did I know the rest of high school, other stories from that little black book would play out in my life?

This included going on similar hang gliding adventures my character Julie's best friend August enjoyed in my short stories.

In my 20's I ended up going on not one but three hang gliding adventures! First, it was soaring above the Outer Banks of North Carolina with an instructor after being towed 1500 feet behind an ultralight. (I would have paid $20 more dollars if I knew how exhilarating gliding on the air thermals over the farms and bay below with an ocean view just beyond was. (I just wanted to make sure I wasn't afraid of heights so I only went 1500 feet instead of 2000 feet my first hang gliding experience!)

Then we landed on our wheels on a tiny runway. Two years later my high school sweetheart watched me run along the same Kitty Hawk sand dunes the Wright Brothers first flew.

At the end of the eight-year relationship with my high school sweetheart, I visited Tutu in her home in New Mexico. At home, she worried about my hang gliding class while I borrowed her car and was thrilled to do little hops down the Albuquerque, New Mexico rocky hills in view of the splendid mecca of hang gliding cliffs, the Sandi Mountains as I learned from father and son hang gliding instructors.

Thanks, August living in the pages of my little black book for inspiring me to fly in real life!

Fast forward to my 40s and often I don't even think about it. My biggest adventures have first been after jotting down short story ideas or whims in that little black book. That includes speaking on the same stage and panels as some of my favorite best-selling authors and mega coaching idols after I intentionally jot down my name, bio, lecture topic, and picture in the same lineup with the megastars.

Notes for my first produced stage play, "The Table; A Comedy About Massage" and a co-authored book You Can't Get It, 'Cause You've Already Got It!, written by me and a blind figure skater named Stash Serafin were started in that little black book. Oh and I became a live arts festival produced playwright and Amazon published author the same day. Now that's actually something I hadn't planned in my black book!

Seeds for teaching leadership to young women in university students in China started in the black book. I literally got inspired by the public library audiobooks of Carol Burnette who produced comedy shows week after week and Gloria Steinem's stories of mentoring women around the world in talking circles.

I jotted down, "I want to be like these women!", and less than a month later I found myself on a plane to China after opening a random email inviting facilitators to teach leadership and empowerment to young women at an English speaking university in China.

The 2018 China flight was paid for by the US State Department through a grant called "Give Women A Voice Through The Arts" and I end up being like my inspiration Carol Burnette teaching improv comedy and theater games to elementary school children, junior high students, factory workers at Foxconn, and a prestigious children's library. Oh and I was their first non-Chinese author guest treated like a VIP on their big stage!

Then I got to live out my dream written in that little black book to be like Gloria Steinem five days a week in China, at a university called SIAS as I lectured on leadership, effective communication, team building to dozens of advanced English speaking students through the organization, World Academy For The Future Of Women. On Fridays, I would have coaching groups helping my students solve their biggest personal and community challenges faced when teaching about the United Nations sustainability goals of clean water, clean air, AIDS education, gender equality...

The stupid part is, I often forget I have the little black book and unnecessarily bang my head against the wall when I get stuck, instead of remembering to jot down my happily-ever-after adventure stories. Doh!

This one day I broke the pattern. Instead of writing a short story in the little black book, I sketched the outcome. My girlfriend Krista had invited me and three other single gals to a mansion owned by a big CEO right on Rehoboth Beach, NJ. I wrote all of our names with male and female symbols, (♂)(♀) next to them. I also sketched a silhouette of a couple kissing inside the circle of a full moon. I drew a volleyball net and couples giving massages on the beach. I even wrote the date of the trip April 2004. Unfortunately, the trip was postponed until the fall, but the story had already been cast.

Without remembering my sketch, after work, I went to the mall this single gal bought myself sexy underwear, got a pixie hair cut, returned my ex's baggy PJ's gift that had laid on my closet floor since Christmas, and got sexy underwear instead. Then I bought myself a diamond hearted necklace 50%. All-day I waited for an April Fools joke. I wanted to show the universe how I wanted to be treated. And I had to start with loving myself again.

That night after the trip to the mall, my girlfriend Janelle dragged me to the bar. It had been almost two years since I was in a real relationship. Guess when this single gal met her husband? That night, April 1, 2004, on a full moon while he was drinking a blue moon. That night he knew he was going to marry me. It took me two weeks to "know". What inspired my head to follow my heart? I discovered what I had sketched in my little black book about falling in love during a full moon in April 2004!

A year and a half later the man from my picture found my black book and proposed to me inside the same pages, telling me he wanted to start our next chapter right away as husband and wife. Crying as I read what he wrote, I said yes! Between tears of joy, I held out my hand as he put a ring on it!

Over the last sixteen years, my husband and I have started our own businesses, traveled to 19 countries together, produced a comedy, been in juried art shows.

To say the little black book was helpful in planning our adventures is a huge understatement.