200 Words with Paul Dini #28 – Thidwicking, Part One

August 28, 2008

Anyone who socializes with human beings is, (at some point) going to get Thidwicked. I coined the term in honor of Dr. Seuss’ character, Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose. It was Thidwick, you may recall, who allowed a tired bug to catch a ride in his antlers and soon wound up playing reluctant host to every other opportunistic critter in the forest. To be Thidwicked is to be put out, inconvenienced or otherwise victimized by someone to whom you extended a courtesy. I illustrate with a personal vignette:

At a recent comic convention I planned to have dinner with my friends Rollo and Fonbean Grozzle (great aliases, huh?) and made reservations for us at a nice steak house. Our plans were overheard by visiting pro, Qwisps Vaguely, who assumed it was a group thing and asked if he could tag along. Now Qwisps is an okay guy, so we figured what the hell, why not? Meet us here at seven and we’ll all go. Seven came and so did Qwisps along with two friends he invited along, Murg and Gueph, plus Fleep, an anemic booth bunny whom Gueph was trying to date. I suppose you can see where this is going…

Paul Dini is the Emmy and Eisner Award winning writer of Batman: The Animated Series,Superman: The Animated Series, Detective Comics, Countdown among many, many other things. You can find him online at either kingofbreakfast.livejournal.com or http://www.jinglebelle.com/.