Sidekick tags along with reporter

Flat Stanley is just hanging around with Daily Mail reporter Rusty Murry when the pairdrop in on a meeting of advertising staff, clockwise from Murry's right, Mary Jo Bolerjack, Susie Kalthoff, Lorie Harter and Lesia McVay during a Tuesday sales staff meeting held in the offices of the Nevada Daily Mail. Rusty Murry/Daily Mail

I have spent the week hanging around with an unusual little fellow named Flat Stanley. I took him with me just about everywhere I went. He never did complain and he was a real ham when it came to having his picture taken.

Since I am in the courthouse a lot, Stanley got to visit some of the folks over there. People were interested in who Stanley was and why he was tagging along with me, and after learning what Stanley was all about, they took right up with him.

They were glad to shake his fingerless laminated hand or pose for a photo with the little guy who a child from the Nevada Head Start crafted out of a piece paper. Actually, 18 Flat Stanleys made their way around the community this week, at the request of Nevada Head Start director Tera McFarland and her students.

The students decided what types of places they were interested in learning about and delivered a Flat Stanley to each place of business or government office. A person at each location was asked to take Stanley with him or her while doing regular weekly duties.

I volunteered to be Flat Stanley's newspaper companion.

Many local businesses -- the Daily Mail included -- had Stanley taped to their windows to raise awareness of Child Abuse Prevention Month and the Week of the Young Child.

I took my Stanley to a sales meeting here in the office and he just hung around and listened. He crawled onto the printing press and posed for a picture and he got to explore the innovation center that is being constructed on the third floor of the Nevada Library.

Stanley seemed to like just sitting around with courthouse maintenance man Rick Warren and he was pleased to meet the prosecuting attorney and watch him work in his office. He got the idea for that while he was sitting on the bench in the courtroom.

He thought Angela Boatwright was a nice young girl, so he wanted to get a picture with her before Tuesday's CERT class began. And I had to peel him off of the ambulance he wanted to drive.

Flat Stanley has big ambitions. And, he passes them off to children through the Flat Stanley Project which helps connect children through literacy and awareness.

Flat Stanley comes from a series of books written by Jeff Brown in the 1960s featuring Stanley Lambchop. In the book, Stanley's father gives him and his brother Arthur a large bulletin board which they put up beside Stanley's bed. It falls during the night and flattens Stanley, but he manages to make the best of a thin existence and go on playing with Arthur, sometimes as a kite.

He finds it easy to get into rooms by sliding under doors and he can visit any of his friends by being mailed to them. In the end, Flat Stanley is rescued by Arthur and returns to 3-D life when Arthur pumps him up with a bicycle pump.