Small Solutions to Big Problems

Small Solutions to Big Problems


What do Rocket City Rednecks, building toys, and a pad and paper have in common?  Should children really be seen and not heard? Are they short and inferior, miniature adults, or resourceful humans with a lack of experience? What would happen if children decended upon the Capital while Congress is on hiatus?  Would they do a better job? Who will be the lawmakers, the businessmen, the scientists in the next few decades?  Our ten year olds?  Our teens?

Yep.  That’s it.  Our six year olds, our ten year olds, our teenagers, they will be paying for your Social Security, passing your laws, and reinventing your electric cars so you can make it to work and back without having an anxiety attack at the fear of being left along on a dark highway out of "juice" and with no plug in sight. 

We should turn our children loose with an idea and watch those wheels turn.  Ours have been stuck in the mud, or spinning in reverse, or perhaps driving quietly in our own little neighborhood on our familiar side of the tracks while we text in the driver’s seat. 

Give them a pen, a pad of paper, and a problem.  Or maybe they should come up with the problem.  They overhear NPR on our car radios, hear our hushed discussions at the dinner table about who lost their job, what playground antics our Congress is up to lately, and how their parents are going to pay for their children’s Adderall prescription, or their own, and their spouses’ own Anti-Depressant while still having enough for rent and hot dogs.  I bet they have some pretty good solutions and though they might sound zany at first recitation, give them a few days to work out the kinks and you might be amazed. 

As for Rocket City Rednecks, a new NatGeo show featuring some brilliant guys in North Alabama who are rocket scientists by day and who gather on the weekends to create and build a solution to a problem they couldn’t dream of getting funded by Congress in a million years but could very well spark ideas in other smart folks watching. 

Yesterday, my sons, six and ten, inspired by the episodes they have watched, decided to create a two wheel bicycle that could be ridden from land into water.  I know, there are three wheelers built for the beach but they haven’t seen them and their design bore no resemblance anyway.  The bicycle isn’t perfected and they might just tackle something else tomorrow and leave yesterdays creation simmering in their minds for a while.  What is miraculous is not so much the finished product but the process they went through.

Not only did these boys share one pad of paper and one pencil in the back seat for hours, they built a creation out of K’nex building toys to test some of their theories, they collaborated on the best design that would be light but also provide balance, and for once, they didn’t fight in the backseat.  They were united in the process of solving a problem.  They also didn’t belittle each other for stupid ideas.  My six year old made some good points and I smiled as my ten year old acknowledged that his little brother’s ideas really were good and he hadn't thought of that solution before.  This from a ten year old who has no problem pointing out the faults in my six year old’s argument, and ours at times, and a six year old who strongly dislikes sharing, especially with his brother. 

Well, that got me thinking about Congress.  Perhaps during summer break, and spring break, and fall break, and pre-election breaks, we should send a bunch of kids to Congress with some problems to solve.  Fat chance, right?  Well, maybe our country isn’t quite ready for that but we can set them free in our living rooms, supervise them in our garages or workshops, buy the kids a few planks of wood and some dowels from the hardware store, and take time to discuss with them the problems of our times.  We can tell them over and over that they really can invent something, solve a problem, and maybe even spark an adult, maybe even a real live scientist, to listen to his or her own inner child and find the answer to a problem together.  Maybe, if we listen to them, not just see them, we will learn that they really do have brains in there, and unlike us, they have only been hearing the word “no” for a decade, give or take a year or so.  We, on the other hand, have been hearing how impossible things are from our bosses, our spouses, our parents, and our society in general for decades, or possibly half-centuries. 

We adults shy from the uphill climb.  We think in terms of how much production would cost, how hard it would be to find investors, whether or not it will end up on the Paid Programming network and later on the shelves of Walgreens or be refused because our invention is not marketable.  We wonder who will listen to us in Congress when we can’t even make changes in our own workplaces.  Risking a new idea or proposing a change is risking a beheading in most bureaucracies.  We have learned to keep our necks short, our mouths shut, and our heads under the radar.

When a few guys in Huntsville, Alabama set out to prove that there are bright folks in the south and that they can use their collective gifts and training and some power tools to solve questions that have far reaching importance to our planet, they also inspired two more brothers in Alabama to do the same.  We like our manners in the South and there will always be a time and place where children need to keep their mouths shut and their hands to themselves.  But when they aren't dining out or at the grandparents’ house, I hope we continue to encourage them to think, create, to shush the inner critic and make changes in this world.  We owe it our children to let them try.  We owe it to ourselves, too.  Don’t you think?


SWPoet