Creativity

Creativity - In the Genes

Though some people think that they have no creativity at all, because they can’t write stories or write songs or paint, I’ve learned if they just search inside a little deeper, they really do. They have an imagination. Most of them just haven’t learned to access and use that part of their brain to their advantage. The mother of necessity can often enable people to think outside the box, see things differently, and be creative.

Many items that our neighbors discarded in their trash found a way into my daddy’s hands. This old man, who was once a child during the Great Depression years in the 1930s and 1940s, had a tendency to hold on to anything and everything. My children’s baby food jars became useful tools in his magnificently organized workshop. The jars held rubber washers, tiny metal grommets, and colored plastic sheetrock anchors. Empty sardine cans mounted on wooden racks became containers for nails and screws.

My daddy’s survival during the Great Depression was not a story I’d heard often but it certainly had its impact in my life. As a child I didn’t really care what the depression years were. What was this “Great Depression?” As described on the web site Answers.com it is: “An economic recession that began on October 29, 1929, following the crash of the U.S. stock market. The Great Depression originated in the United States, but quickly spread to Europe and the rest of the world. Lasting nearly a decade, the Depression caused massive levels of poverty, hunger, unemployment and political unrest.”

As an adult with my small children, on a very limited income, inevitably I found myself following in my father's footsteps of unusual behavior. I had been blessed with this unique creativity all along and just didn’t know it. Because of his obvious determination and eccentric frugality, my daddy was an example to me of how to utilize garbage, of all things, and how to make do with the things you have on hand. Now, out of sheer necessity, I recognized his madness had been instilled in my brain, though much to my chagrin sometimes.

For me, an empty Pringles container became a spatula at a picnic by Lake Allatoona when I’d forgotten the real kitchen gadget. After starting the charcoal in the grill and putting on the hamburger patties to cook, I realized I had forgotten it and had to quickly come up with some ingenious way to flip these raw, gooey little platters. Luckily I had brought a can of Pringles potato chips for the picnic. By cutting off the opening of the container which had a metal ring, then flattening out the aluminum lined cardboard edge, I was able to flip them and accomplish my task. Everyone laughed, but it did get the job done and we had a great picnic after all. My creation, borne from the mother of necessity, saved the picnic and had just delivered her bounty of delicious grilled burgers.

I realize now that my daddy wasn’t so weird after all. Although we were extremely different, our common, creative spirits had saved us in our minor catastrophes on many occasions. However much different people can be, their imaginations can bring about some very unique inventions when forced to, possibly bringing wealth for their ingenuity one day. Karen Kersting describes creativity in her article from the Monitor on Psychology online magazine: “Not all creative people are alike, which makes defining creativity a challenge and assessing it a monumental undertaking. The traditional psychological definition of creativity includes two parts: originality and functionality” (Kersting, 2003, p. 40). "You can't be creative unless you come up with something that hasn't been done before," says psychologist Dean Keith Simonton, PhD, of the University of California, Davis. "The idea also has to work, or be adaptive or be functional in some way; it has to meet some criteria of usefulness." (Kersting, 2003, p. 40)

The sardine cans, baby food jars, Pringle cans and many other kinds of “trash” that are found in the dumpsters and landfills could become someone’s riches one day. In our current economic similarity of that well-known, historical depression era, many people have now become more frugal and become aware of their loose spending habits, using things they have around the house in order to save money. This truly has been a good movement from an otherwise bad economic situation.

As I look back on my daddy’s seemingly ridiculous habits of saving what I thought was useless garbage at the time, his actions had implanted a creative spirit in me after all. I still wash jars after they’re empty of the food, take wrappers off plastic containers, and hold onto them for a while, “just in case.” Sometimes however, the clutter gets to me. With somewhat of a hesitant move, those things end up in the garbage can anyway. But I do find myself feeling guilty and wondering if that item couldn’t have been utilized for something else.

Creativity is sometimes seen both as a curse and a blessing. Although we got tired of the apparent junk, my daddy created many useful gadgets. My crafty mom created customized dolls and toys for others. I learned from them and like them, how to use every little smidgen of a piece of cloth, save used nails, and even make a television remote control holder out of a plastic ketchup bottle. An old lawnmower frame combined with a pressure washer rolled with ease. A box window fan mounted on a four-legged handicap walker gave height to a breeze where it was needed. Used wisely, many things are patented and wealth is obtained. Unlike them however, I am a creator of a different sort as I write songs, music and stories. With creative imaginations, a wheel was invented, books are written, stories are told, rockets are made and men walk on the moon.

Both my parents have gone now. Mama died in 2006 and my daddy in January 2011. My three children and I recently went to their house of “50 something years,” my childhood home. As my children were growing up, they were not allowed to step foot into my daddy’s shop without supervision because of all the dangerous tools. Like them, when I was a child, my own grandfather’s woodworking shop in Athens was off limits for me, but I still managed to sneak in occasionally and admire his creations. As my children and I cleaned things out of my parent’s house in February, they had the full-fledged and permissive opportunity to plunder through my daddy’s previously mysterious cave of gadgets. Oh how enjoyable, the guilty pleasure of being in their grandfather’s Gadget Heaven!