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Octopus ink wrote my finest letters. I kept one as a clerk on a voyage to Macao. He could write with eight pens at the same time. He kept the log, did the sums, and drew the charts. When he blushed, the whole page turned pink, and I knew he had lied.

His Majesty the Sultan bet me his beard that no man could count the sand in his garden. I asked for a spoon and one afternoon. At sundown I gave him a number so long it took two clerks to say it. He checked none of it, shaved at once, and wept.

Baking was my father's one true gift. He once made a loaf so light that it got away. It rose over the barn and drifted toward Hamelin. We chased it on horseback for a week with butter knives. A passing crow got the crust, and we got the blame.

Chess with the Czar lasted eleven winters. He moved a pawn. I took a nap. He moved a knight. I had a son. When at last I won, the queen on the board winked at me, and the Czar sent me a sleigh full of plums for my trouble.

Up at the North Pole there is a real pole, and I put it there. It was.