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mental_floss e-news is a weekly publication. Each volume includes a letter from Mangesh and me, related trivia, and selected blog links. We are less than a month away from a fancy new HTML format. If you’d like to subscribe, go to mentalfloss.com and look for the subscription box in the left-hand navigation. Here is our most recent note.

“Should we change into the Boy Scout uniforms here, or wait ‘til we get to Central Park?”

This was the hardest question I’d ever been asked.

Let me back up. Mental_floss has a book coming out next year called BE AMAZING – a how-to guide with tips on tasks like starting your own country and traveling through time. Our publisher wants a publicity photo of founding flossers Mangesh and Will, and Mango had a few different ideas for poses to test. Since Will lives in Birmingham, I’m his stunt double.

One idea was dressing up like Boy Scouts. With our photographer waiting in Central Park, we mulled our options. We could 1) Change in our office, then journey 3.3 miles in tight-fitting Scout outfits – including cut-off green pants; or 2) Travel in plain clothes, find a private tree, and take turns changing behind it.

We chose the second option and struggled to find a dressing area. This I know: if you’re going to change into a Boy Scout disguise in the wooded section of a public park, you don’t want to get caught halfway through. Especially not with a Little League field in the background. But the sun was setting on our photo shoot. So, I hopped a fence and set a wardrobe-change speed record, which Mangesh subsequently shattered.

The pictures came out wildly embarrassing, in a wow-I’m-glad-I’m-only-the-stunt-double/ I-probably-can’t-run-for-office-now kind of way. But if the photos do get out, I’ve got a plan. And that plan starts with reading the “travel through time” chapter in BE AMAZING.

All in a day’s work.