For some people pure fun and fantasy are not enough, they want to know the method behind the madness. We can't argue with that, it's actually just as fascinating to know how the idiots with nothing better to do created their madness as reading their madness is (and enjoying the occasional visual piece). So, we will take a deep breath, count to the magical Dum-De-Dum number of two, and attempt to be serious. Wah!!!

We both have the same science class which is, of course, in a handy-dandy science lab. When class lagged and we had nothing better to do...we started creating imaginary friends. Trust us, there are absolutely no drugs involved. Anyway, it started with Leslie creating 'Bob,' her imaginary gay fairy. He evolved from the fact that she didn't want anyone to use her pencil, so she gave out a lusty yell that was generally to the effect of "that's Bob's pencil!! unhand it!!" He became a fairy, after all fairies are the epitome of...um, well the epitome of something. And gay because at the time we were discussing a gay friend of Leslie's in particular and drag queens in general (Leslie claims that if she were male she'd want to be a drag queen, go figure).

Then, not wanting to spend her life being pushed around by Bob and having no defense (yes, Bob does push both of us...you should see Becky fly!), Becky created Nick the Leprechaun. Nick is a fellow a little prone to mood swings, but other than that quite a good companion. Emma the pixie, Nick's girlfriend, evolved after that, and then they just kept coming.

When creativity gets a good whack it tends to roll a little farther from its starting point, which we believe is one of Newton's Laws but we're not sure which one. Characters, so to speak, kept popping up all influenced by our surroundings, words we heard, etc. The actual name Dum-De-Dum didn't come along until Leslie started to write the actaul story of Dum-De-Dum. She figured that since we had all these fantastic names, and a few stories behind some of the characters, why not go ahead and put it all together.

The Goldfish Clan came directly inspired from our science lab when we did experiments on goldfish and breathing. Leslie almost killed her poor goldfish, and he was only brought back to life through the incantations of the holy chants (made up on the spur of the moment, but they worked all the same). Shortly after we dissected fish....and there lay Fred under Leslie's scalpel. So, we named him Fred. I met Fred. He was dead. I had to dissect him. (sing to the tune of "This Old Man"). A speech of grand proportions followed (Fred was going to be someone!!) and voila, a character was added.

Other characters came about from science experiments such as 'Bombay the Cartesian Diver' who appeared when we were doing a lab to display Boyle's Law (the lab was called Cartesian Diver Analysis). Or brought about by lazily handed out creativity (Becky: if a tree falls in a forest and kills a mime, does anybody care? Leslie: only if it's Morgan the Mournful Mime). Or as a prop to other characters like Nick and Emma's twin daughters Daisy and Lily.

So, as you can see, the sources are limitless. And once Leslie had started on the Dum-De-Dum story and Becky had drawn a few fantastic renderings of several characters, we thought we might as well put it up on the Internet. After all, Dum-De-Dum is one big inside joke and inside jokes are the best and most refreshing of all!

If you have any questions about what the heck we're talking about, just go ahead and e-mail either Leslie at [email protected] or Becky at [email protected].

Written material and design on this page is copyright Leslie Terwilliger, 1999, all rights reserved. Concept idea copyright Leslie Terwilliger and Becky Chambers, 1999, all rights reserved. Webmaster is Leslie Terwilliger. Any questions about the HTML of this document, broken links, broken images, complaints on loading pages and navigation, etc. should be directed to her at [email protected].