Inspiration

Inspiration

Inspiration comes in many forms, and sometimes you do not even realize that it is right in front of you. Take for example young Elias working in the cramped office in Kansas City Missouri in the beginning of the roaring twenties. As he sat there at his drawing board Thursday in the summer of 1920 making up stories about the adventures of Alice, he heard the sound of a siren at the factory off in the distance signaling the noon lunch hour.
He stood up from his desk stretching his tired sore muscles as he walked over to his coat hanging on the wall. He reached into his pocket removing a sandwich wrapped in paper. Filling an old tin cup with water from the sink in the corner he returned to his desk and carefully unwrapped his sandwich. It was not much, just two slices of bread with a thin piece of cheese in between, but in these tough times he was lucky to have anything to eat at all.
He removed half of the sandwich from the wrapper and started to eat his cheese sandwich as he had done every day for the last three days, when a creature went scurrying across the floor. Looking down he saw a tiny gray field mouse scrambling for cover as it ran toward the sink. He watched intently as the little creature stopped, and turning the tiny mouse looked back at him with his little nose poking up into the air sniffing as if it had detected some tasty morsel.
It was at this point that the days Elias spent alone in the small office changed. The little mouse bravely maneuvered across the floor to the desk where it stopped at the feet of Elias, and sat up on its hind legs with its nose in the air. Elias broke off a piece of cheese and dropped it down on the floor. The small rodent ran to it, and picking it up with his front paws he sat eating as Elias finished his lunch in the company of his new friend.
The next day like clockwork the siren went off at noon, and as Elias opened his lunch the little furry creature came to visit, only this time he appeared at the top of the drawing board of Elias’s desk. Sitting up with his nose sniffing the air, he waited as Elias placed a small piece of cheese down. The small mouse sat up holding the cheese as he ate. Every day he would come for lunch, as Elias would talk softly to him, and the little mouse he called Mortimer seemed to listen.
This amazing friendship lasted for several months until one day Mortimer stopped showing up. Elias missed his little friend, but he soon went on to another job in a different location, but Elias never forgot his little friend, and several years later when he was drawing characters for a new cartoon he remembered the tiny little friend and started to draw him with his little tail and big ears.
At the request of his wife Lillian he changed the name of his little friend from Mortimer to Mickey Mouse, and Walter Elias Disney and Mickey went on to change the world.

Inspiration can sometimes be right in front of your eyes you just have to look for it.

P.S. This is a fictional account of what I believe could have happened from the information I have collected.

Robert L. Murdoch 02/06/09