I was sitting at my dining room table. As usual, there were lots of little pieces of paper on the table covered with the bright red lacquer tablecloth. I pushed the pile of papers aside to give myself some space. Television was on in the background. The daytime news anchor was reporting the latest news. I picked up a pen, pulled a still blank sheet from a stack, and started writing:
“Once upon a time there was a young girl named Julietta Becker. She lived in a small village deep down in the Black Forest and dreamed of the great wide world and of great happiness.”
Suddenly a song was on my lips:
Dreams come true sometimes, when you don’t believe it.
Like a bird they fly away, and leave you behind.
Dreams and fantasies always surround you … are all around you.
Dreams and fantasies come true, sometimes.
On my sideboard was my father’s little black dictaphone. I jumped up and picked it up. Quickly I sang the song on tape. But that was just the beginning. One song after another bubbled out of me. I couldn’t write as fast as the ideas flowed.
I Want to See the World – The girl is given a wondrous powder and the muffins in her bakery come to life. Together with them she sings: We Are the Muffins. The third song was born. Immediately afterwards Julie sang with Mr. Donut: I Wanna Be a Muffin. This song was also quickly recorded in the little black “box”. I wrote the lyrics in English, the story in German.
As I scribbled away so happily, I realized I was out of paper. I rummaged through my mountain of paper – to no avail. When I looked under my desk in the wastebasket, I discovered a large baker’s bag. Now it was the turn of the theme song Miss Muffin®.
One day after the glorious musical song-writing evening, I sat down at my computer and typed everything up. It was only then that I really realized that this was absolutely insane: 23 songs with lyrics and melody in four hours. “Nobody believes me,” I told my colleague at the time, Andrea Ebinger. “Yes, they do believe you, Miss Renz.”
Mrs. Ebinger was the nicest, funniest and most helpful colleague ever.
I surfed the Internet and inquired how to apply to the Guinness Book. As a joke, I simply wrote down my name there. Silently I prayed: “Jesus, if you really want to bless many people with the Miss Muffin Project, then I need an entry in the Guinness Book!” I also had to provide three witnesses, and I had them. I had called one friend during the “divine inspiration” that night and kept singing new songs to her. The second witness was the organist of my home church, who later tried to put all the songs into sheet music. And last but not least, Josef Grgic, our former concrete ready mix driver, had come by with his wife Maria quite “by chance” when I had my inspiration. It turned out that he owned a recording studio. He later recorded all the songs, so I could relieve my little composer’s head of all the stored song data. That was a great relief to me!
When I came home one evening, there was a big white envelope in my mailbox. The postmark was from Hamburg. “Probably some advertising mail again,” I thought, and went up the stairs to the third floor. On the way, I opened the envelope. It said, “Dear record holder, congratulations, we have recognized your record and are sending you here the certificate attesting to your record. We have bindingly registered you for the German Guinness Book of World Records 2001!”
And on the certificate it read:
“Jutta Renz from Sindelfingen (D) wrote a (not yet published) musical with 23 songs from November 30 to December 1, 1998.”
I was almost struck by the blow. Crazy! I had to sit down first.
