Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

Everybody wants to rule the world,
or so I’m told.
But I know, I will rule the world,
with every rotation, every open turn.
I’m playing in a field of thoughts,
that I will determine,
because I will rule the world, my world.

Will you rule your world?
What will it take for you to give yourself time to flow,
to move pass the things we say we must,
and open up a box of goodies just for you.

I am the ruler of my world.
The author of my story,
the singer of my song,
and I’ve just begun to unwrap the glory in my future.

i’m a hooper my ratty old t-shirt says,
and i’m here to rule the world.

It’s All in the Tape. Part 8

It’s All in the Tape Part 8.

Continued from Chapter 3 Part 7

I managed to sell all but two hoops.  I felt like a celebrity and if I had any reservations about starting a business, I hooped them all away that night.  I met so many people who showed a real interest in what I was doing.  I met fellow hoopers who shared their stories and their moves. I met the hoopers who didn’t know yet they were hoopers.

People would see the hoops hanging, and walk slower, eyeballing the sparkling circles. I could tell they want to try one out.

“Adult size hoops?” I could hear them thinking.

Some would walk by and with a flick of their wrist say something like, “Oh, a hula hoop.”  They’d look away quickly as if the hoop was completely insignificant in their lives.  But many times, they’d double take.

“Those are big,” they’d say, being pulled to my booth like a magnet. “Wow, adult size hoops,” they’d say in a whispered excitement.  “I used to hula hoop as a kid,” and they’d run their fingers along the edge of the hoop like they were being transported back into their childhood, remembering the motion.

 

It’s All in the Tape. Part 7

It’s All in the Tape. Part 7

continued from Part 6

The first festival I ever sold at was Last Thursday, a well known street fair in Portland, Oregon, held on the last Thursday of every month.  During the months of May through September the street is closed down and artist and vendors, old and young alike, bring their merchandise to the streets, set up shop, and hope to make some dollars. There is everything from jewelry, paintings, metal work, clothing and of course, even a couple other hoop vendors.

I set up shop in the middle and before long I got word on the street that there were other hoop vendors.  But even with the competition I may have had, I cleared my inventory.  I couldn’t believe it.  Sales started around four o’clock before the roads were closed. Just as I tightened the Christmas tree stand and hung the last hoop on the pole, a car drove up and asked how much for two hoops.  The thirty old woman and her niece got out, picked their favorite hoops, paid me $40 and drove away.

The first one to sell was one I thought was the ugliest.  This hoop fell short compared to the rest, or so I thought.  I suppose it to goes show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in the end every hoop I made was beautiful in it’s own right.

It’s All in the Tape. Part 6

It’s All in the Tape. Part 6

Continued from Chapter 3 Part 5

The spelling had changed? Somewhere along this road of etymology Loo actually meant Love? Hoop to my love? Oh, my goodness, I have just named my company.

Hoop to my loo. I laid in bed wide awake all night. I called my friend a dozen times to make sure it was a good name. “Am I crazy? Is it a good name? It is, right?”

I am kind of crazy, true. Very true. I knew Loo would still be tricky. Internationally, it would be tricky. The current definition of Loo means, “bathroom” in most of the Britain.  But I loved everything else about it about the name “hoop to my loo.”

I laid out all of my worries on the table about the name, and one by one I assured myself along the way.  “I can handle my international success when I get it,” I can remember my crazy, passionate brain thinking. And I registered myself with the state of Oregon as a business. Hoop to my Loo was born.

I wish I could remember exactly what I was thinking on this day. I had no idea what I was about to do.  Registering myself and my hoop as a company was about to make a beautiful relationship become a bit tricky.  The hoop was about to teach me a lesson, multiple lessons, that I didn’t know I needed to learn. When I started Hoop to my Loo, and perhaps other hoop business owners may understand this, I started to change in my perspective of just how big the hoop is, and for me, I found that knowledge made it really hard for me.  (I will talk more about this in Chapter 6.)

It’s All in the Tape. Part 5

It’s All in the Tape. Part 5

Continued from Part 4.

There was no manuel on how I was suppose to start a hoop business. I had cues from the hoop business that were doing well, but all I could think abut was getting hoops into people’s hands. My passion for hooping guided me passed any second thoughts I was having. Ready or not I was about to start a business.

Of course my new business needed a name. At the time of starting it, the most important thing that hooping gave me was the ability to play, the ability to feel like a child. I loved the fact the hoop made me feel young and vibrant. I wanted my business to have a name that would immediately make you feel like a kid, but upon investigation always have a bigger meaning.

I started going through a list of words that would bring a sense of naivety and perhaps nostalgia.  I spent a few days always writing down new ideas, but nothing seem to stick.  After going through a dozen or so, I started listing kids songs and games. One night while I brainstorming with a friend, hoop to my loo came to our heads. Hoop to my loo? All night long I could not stop singing, “hoop, hoop, hoop to my loo,” but how was “loo” spelled? Loo or Lou?  I started to search for a history of the song “skip to my lou.”

Thanks to wikipedia I found Skip to my lou, had a unique history.

“Skip to My Lou” is a popular children’s song. Skip to My (The) Lou was a popular partner-stealing dance from America’s frontier period. In early America, ‘respectable folks’ in strict Protestant communities regarded the fiddleas one of the devil’s tools (if it led to dancing, which was regarded as sinful). Faced with such a religious obstacle to socializing, young people developed the “play-party,” in which all the objectionable features of dancing were removed or masked so that grave elders would overlook their activity. The dancers sang and the audienceclapped to create rhythm for their own music. In time, the play-party acquired a life of its own. It became an ideal amusement for teenagers and young married couples. In many a frontier community, the bear hunters, Indian fighters, the rough keelboat men and the wild cowboys could be seen dancing innocently with their gals, like so many children at a Sunday school picnic. As people moved westward and communities shrugged off the ‘witch-hunt’ mentality which plagued early Protestant New England, square dancing and barn dancing became acceptable, at least to some. The “loo” in the title is the Scottish word for “love.” The spelling change from “loo” to “lou” probably happened as Anglo-Americans, and the song, became Americanized.

 

It’s All in the Tape. Part 4

Notice the nice Christmas Tree stand. Super safe. OSHA approved. mmm. maybe not.

It’s All in the Tape. Part 4

Continued from Chapter 3 Part 3

The house I lived in was a perfect house for owning a hoop business I remember thinking one day after I’d cut another hundred feet of tubing.  Even the two post foundations that were in the basement were perfectly distanced from each other so I could stretch out all the hoops I needed. There was a garage that was big enough to house thirty hoops and two cars.

But I still had hoops everywhere. I did my best to constrain them, but like children my hoops only wanted to play. I’d build hoop stands to try and make sense of this new inventory I had start creating. I had imagined my beautiful sparkly hoops hanging from a post, a well decorated post that resembled something like a maypole. I wanted hoops hanging low and high, sparkly and joyful. What I made was pretty and joyful alright, but being held up by a Christmas tree stand I had found in someone’s trash, didn’t make it very durable.

But it had been pretty and bright.  I had started ordering tape from a number of different companies I found on the web, and since my roommate had told me that the red tape on the first hoop I bought was wrapped with gaffer tape, the same tape they use for stages and production, I went straight for the gaffer.

I found every single color and I chose the brightest I could find. I wrapped that post in the neon green, neon orange, neon pink, and neon yellow. It was like a hoop beacon. There was no missing it.

 

It’s All in the Tape. Part 3

 

It’s All in the Tape.

Chapter 3 Part 3

Continued from Chapter 3 Part 2

Once I figured out how easy it was to make hoops, I went crazy making hoops of every single size. At one point, I had to stand on the coffee table to tape up my biggest hoop.  I had hoops in the garage, in the living room, hanging out in the basement. To someone else, there was a hoop invasion going on, but for me, oh, it was paradise.  There were hoops for everyone.

On sunny days, I would open up the garage door and throw the hoops out for the world. If you build the hoop, they will come. It’s completely true.  And I was building hoops. I was going to home depot at least once a week, standing in the long, tall aisles sorting my way through the 100PSI, 160 PSI, the 1/2 inch or 3/4 of irrigation tubing. I’d cut through the 100 foot long bundles with PVC cutters and have between 8 to 10 35 inch to 42 inch tall hoops.

In the beginning, I really believed that I had to stretch the hoop out overnight. To me the circles seemed tighter if I stretched the piece of plastic out before I connected it together with the plastic insert, so I would have ten to twelve pieces of irrigation tubing stretched out in the basement.