For those of you wondering what that funny spectacled man (his name is Det) is doing on the desk of a writer, I’ll have to take you back to my childhood, when my family would make extended visits to the home of my maternal grandparents in Hof an der Saale, Germany.

As my older brother and I spoke little German amid relatives who spoke little English, we struggled to find productive activities between being doused with strawberry torte and having wars with each other using Mensch Ärgere Dich Nicht game pieces. The most delightful respites during this exertion were the Mainzelmännchen cartoon snippets.

https://germangirlinamerica.com/cartoon-men-on-german-tv/

The beauty of it for a non-bilingual was that they were mostly silent, relying on six cheerful little men/boys and clever story lines to rivet our attention. As in all good humor, they often conveyed a thought-provoking truth, well before the term ‘flash fiction’ was invented. Det, my muse, reminds me of the power of story. With or without words, the story’s the thing.