When I was around 40, I collaborated with Katie to create a shaggy dog story.

We’d been chuckling about the genre, kind of collecting them. I think our favorite was the tale that ends with the line “people who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.” We decided to make one ourselves.

We knew we needed to start at the end, so after a bit of talk we twisted our selected moral into “don’t cry over milled spilk.”

Then we had to create spilk. Clearly it was a grain. We had to come up with a milling accident. That wasn’t difficult at all. I don’t remember the details of our story, but we could do it again in minutes, preferably around a kitchen table with coffee mugs in our hands.

If you’ve ever created a crossword puzzle or a maze, you know how much it teaches you about solving them. Well, making up a shaggy dog story is even more instructive.

Not only do you acquire a better understanding of the medium. You learn how easy it is for a person, narrative-crazed as any person is, to create a story that explains observed phenomena.

Hello, godlet: You just made a myth.