Something that’s stuck with me over several years (and now seriously dates me) is the John (Cougar) Mellencamp song “Hurt So Good” and the notion that you can be hurt, but it can be a good thing.

This Hallowe’en, I was reminded of that notion as I experienced a hurt that I can look back on (well, it was last Monday) with nostalgia, and no regrets.
It’s also one of those stories where I was a bit stupid, and others can laugh along as they learn what not to do.

We carved pumpkins this year, pumpkins our 2.75-year-old daughter handpicked from the local Vancouver-area seasonal mainstay known as The Pumpkin Patch.
On a whim, I carved the pumpkin lids in funky shapes, partly to differentiate them from each other, partly because a circle was proving challenging with the big knife I was using.
The unforeseen difficulty was that, with the biggish spoon I was using to scoop out the insides of the pumpkin, my hand kept hitting the jagged edge of the Star lid pumpkin (pictured on the right).
So I have a big bruise on top of my hand.

So I’ve bled this Hallowe’en. Internally.
And far from debilitatingly.

I tell the story as a reminder, almost a note-to-self: we can walk through life and avoid hurts. My world is so fraught with that now that I need to be wary of the hurts of our two kids too. But there’s a kind of hurt, the fruit of a kind of stupidity, that makes for a story to tell, even a short simple one. The story-generating incidents of life are its flavour and as much as we don’t go seek them out, they find us like magnets, and how we deal is part of what life’s all about.

Only having a bruised hand is a small price to pay for having a short, bloggable story to tell.

Oh yeah, we got those perfect circles this year by using a drill.
Thanks to my awesome wife for seeing that idea on FB.

Every once in a while, there’s a story for you, or someone in your org (marketing or otherwise), that can help your target audience feel better about themselves. So my Hallowe’en post this year is a wish that you have just enough crazy or fun or stupid or hurt to make for a good story.
Without bleeding too much.