Past-It Notes: The Past-Tense Svengali Force Pad

In the Dustings of Woofle post before I went on my break, I made the point that a Svengali pad made to look like a pad of Post-it notes doesn’t make a ton of sense, because people don’t write on Post-it notes when they’re still in their pad form. In fact, people use Post-it notes for the sole purpose of writing on the top sheet and then discarding it. Therefore it makes it particularly hard to justify why you’re carrying around a “filled out” Post-it pad, unless your performance character is, “Guy Who Doesn’t Know How Pads Work.”

Then Benjamin from ThoughtCast emailed me an interesting idea. What if the Post-it notes weren’t on the pad? What if it was a stack of used Post-its? As Benjamin wrote, “This way it seems like a collection of post it notes you’ve used over time instead of buying a fresh pad and writing on each still stuck note like a psycho.”

So this is a Svengali Post-it “pad” that you will make yourself. But it requires no cutting. Your force sheets will all be set back a millimeter or two, and all your non-force sheets will be forward a little bit. Either straight or at an angle, it doesn’t really matter. This is meant to look like a stack of used Post-it notes. So you’re absolutely not going for something neat looking. It’s supposed to be messy and the Svengali principle is hidden in this messiness rather than in the precision cutting of a professionally made Svengali pad.

For the purposes of illustration, I’ll use blue Post-its to represent a sheet with the force information on it, and pink (salmon?) sheets to represent the sheets with non-force information on them. In practice you would want to use all the same color, or all completely random colors. I’m using the two separate colors here just for clarity.

So first you put down a force sheet, then you stick a non-force sheet on top, but have it jutting forward a little.

Then you will put another force sheet on, pretty much squared with the previous force sheet. Then a non-force sheet sticking out, and so on. It works best if your force sheets are generally in the same position. You can go wild with the non-force sheets, but if they’re too all over the place, it makes it difficult to flip through the stack.

When you’re done you’ll have something that shows only non-force sheets as you casually flip through it.

But will only show force sheets if you direct someone to open up the stack anywhere and get a look at what the Post-It says.

Of course this is much subtler when all the sheets are the same color.

If this is something you think you’ll want to actually use beyond just playing around with the idea, then you may want to do something more permanent than just the standard Post-it adhesive that’s on the pages. Once a page has been peeled and restuck, it doesn’t really maintain it’s stickiness that well. So someone opening up the pad might “break” the pad at that point. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, unless you feel it is for your purposes. If so you’ll probably want to glue the sheets together where the adhesive would be.

Now how might you use such a thing? To force a playing card? No, let’s not do that. Let’s think…in what context might Post-its be used?

Maybe you were using Post-its to identify which items in your garage you wanted your son to bring to the dump.

Okay… that’s my fault. I asked a bad question. I should have asked: In what context might Post-its be used… and there’s a chance a reasonable person would hang onto those used Post-its?

I’ll give you three possible themes. These are probably not quite useable as is, but they may give you an idea of a direction to pursue.

Love

Everyday your wife (or husband/child/significant-other/inconsequential-other) leaves a little love note for you on the bathroom mirror so it’s there when you’re getting ready for work. You’ve held onto a bunch of your favorite ones. People can’t really read minds, you tell your audience, but they can tap into intense emotional frequencies and the items attached to those emotions. And you can use these notes to demonstrate that phenomena.

Someone flips open the stack of notes, reads one, and then tries to imagine themselves saying the sentiment on the note to someone they care about. You’re able to pick up on this.

Hate

You’re standing on stage at the Magic Castle. You toss a stack of used Post-its on the table.

Every day, at your old job, you would come back from lunch and find a whiny, passive-aggressive note from your boss on your computer monitor. At first it was an annoyance. But then it grew to be symbolic of everything you hated about the job: the mindless busywork, constantly having someone looking over your shoulder, having no autonomy. As soon as you got back from lunch you’d take that note, tear it up and toss it in the trash.

But then you changed tactics. You decided to use the notes to finally motivate you to pursue a job you were actually passionate about: a career in magic. You started keeping the notes. Letting them pile up on your desk. You’d read through them over and over, building up your annoyance and anger.

First a few days passed, then weeks. The pile grew larger. You still felt frozen in your career. Then you gave yourself both a challenge and a deadline. And you told yourself the moment you had mastered the trick of knowing which note someone was thinking of, that would be your sign that it was the right time to quit your job and go into magic full-time.

“And here I am today!”
blah-blah-blah
”Take a look at any note in the stack.”
blah-blah-blah.
”You’re thinking of a note that says… it’s something about… oh this is the one where he said I’m only allowed one personal item at my cubicle so I either had to get rid of the picture of my wife or the picture of my daughter. Correct?”
blah-blah-blah
”Pursue your dreams.”
blah-blah-blah

Magic

“See that book on the book shelf. The tall thin one with the white and red lettering on the spine? That was the first magic book I ever bought with my own money. I read it over and over and marked it with Post-its to make a note of everything I found interesting in the book. I would write quotes or ideas from the book on the notes and then stick the note on the page where that quote appeared. I didn’t want to highlight or underline the pages themselves, because I was so protective of this book since it cost me almost all the money I had at the time.

“Some years later I removed the Post-its, but I just found them all stuck together in a box with a bunch of other old junk. I wanted to try something. Peel up a corner anywhere in the stack and take a look at whatever note you open to.”

You try to read their mind, but aren’t getting anything clearly.

You pick up the pad and flip through a few of the options to see if any jump out at you. But again, you’re not having any luck.

“Maybe it will help if I have the book,” you say. You pull the book from the bookshelf and there is a Post-it sticking out from the side. “That’s weird. I thought I removed all of them.” You open the book to the marked page and say, “Uhm, okay, this is a long shot, but are you thinking of the phrase: You will need to obtain two plastic, glue-on eyes?”

Your friend says that yes, they are.

“That son of a bitch! He beat me to it.”