There is a strange and mostly unspoken rule we all seem to agree on.
If a professional athlete signs an object, that object becomes more valuable.
If a toddler draws on the same object, it becomes less valuable.
The object itself does not change. The ink is still ink. The surface is still the surface.
But somehow, everything changes anyway.
The Magic of the Right Name
Take a baseball. By itself, it is worth a few dollars. You can buy a bucket of them at a sporting goods store and not think twice about it.
Now imagine a professional athlete signs it. The right athlete. The right era. The right story attached to the name.
Suddenly, that same baseball is worth hundreds. Sometimes thousands.
Nothing physical happened to improve it. In fact, it is arguably worse now. You cannot even use it anymore.
But we would never say it is damaged.
We say it is authenticated.
Where I Accidentally Became the “Athlete”
When I released Under the Oak Tree, something funny started happening.
People asked me to sign their copy.
And I did not feel like an author in that moment. I felt like a toddler with a crayon.
It honestly felt awkward. My signature did not add value to the book. In my mind, the only thing I was doing was lowering the value by scribbling on something that should have been left clean. Like the difference between a collectible and a kid drawing on the wall.
But that is not what the request was really about.
What people were actually saying, without saying it, was something like this: what if this goes somewhere? What if this book takes off? What if it sells millions? What if, years from now, this becomes the kind of thing people look back on and say, “I had the first copy. I met him before anyone knew who he was.”
And suddenly the signature is not about ink.
It is about time.
It is about being early.
It is about the story you can tell later.
When the Same Act Becomes a Problem
Now let a toddler draw on that baseball.
Same surface. Same concept. Ink applied by a human hand.
But this time, we do not call it special.
We call it ruined.
We might even throw it away.
And that is where things get interesting.
Nothing Changed Except Meaning
The difference is not skill. The difference is not permanence. The difference is not even aesthetics.
The difference is meaning.
We decided one mark adds value because of who made it.
We decided the other subtracts value for the exact same reason.
Which tells us something important.
Meaning is not inherent. It is assigned.
We Do This Constantly (Not Just With Objects)
We pretend this is about collectibles, but it is really about how we see the world.
A signature on a contract is binding. The same scribble from the wrong person is meaningless.
A painting in a museum is priceless. The same image on a bathroom wall is vandalism.
A sentence in a book can be literature. The same sentence on a sticky note is nothing.
The material never changes. Only the story we attach to it does.
Why This Feels Funny (and a Little Uncomfortable)
There is something quietly absurd about all of this.
If you step back far enough, it is hard not to laugh at how confident we are in these distinctions.
We do not just notice meaning. We enforce it.
We build entire systems around it. We insure it. We argue about it.
And most of the time, we do not even realize we are the ones assigning it.
This Is Where Misunderstanding Begins
Problems show up when we forget that meaning is something we give, not something that simply exists on its own.
When someone else assigns meaning differently, we assume they are wrong, careless, or disrespectful.
But often, they are just operating under a different set of assumptions about what matters and why.
The toddler is not trying to devalue the baseball. They are just participating in the world the only way they know how.
The value did not disappear. We removed it.
Why This Matters More Than It Seems
Once you notice this pattern, you start seeing it everywhere.
In arguments. In traditions. In institutions. In the things we protect and the things we discard.
So many disagreements are not about facts or objects at all.
They are about who gets to decide what something means.
And once you realize that, a lot of conflict suddenly makes more sense.
A Small Thought to Sit With
If a signature can make an object priceless, and a crayon can make it worthless, then maybe the real power is not in the object at all.
Maybe it is in the stories we agree to tell about it.
And maybe understanding that is the first step toward understanding each other.