A Straw from a Witch's Broom

When my daughter was in late grade school, we had a Halloween party. We had all the traditional Halloween games like passing around dead “body parts” in a dark room in front of a glowing fireplace.(A side comment:  One of the bowls held squid tentacles. I forget what they were supposed to represent. But when I bought them at the butcher’s counter of a rather high-end grocery store, the butcher commented that it was the first time he had ever sold any. I was fascinated since I’d seen a changing array of them on display in the counter for many months. I guess that’s how you come to be known as a classy store, selling squid tentacles that no one buys!)But back to the Halloween party. It began with a treasure hunt. However, instead of giving out the usual list of concrete items to be found in the neighborhood, I created a more fanciful list. A straw from a witch’s broom, a wing from a bat, a finger bone from a skeleton. I told the girls that they could bring back anything they could find that could reasonably stand in for the requested item, but they had to tell a story about how they came by what they brought.The girls scattered and returned at the requested time … empty handed. They were all flummoxed. Except for my daughter. Beth-Alison had found a stand-in for every item and had a story to tell about each.I was sorry for the failure of the game. For the young hostess to be the only winner was hardly the way to create a successful party. But still, when the party was over, I found myself wondering. My daughter hadn't known about the way the treasure hunt would be played before the list and the rules were revealed, so she had no unfair advantage. Why was she able to enter imaginatively into the game and the other girls were not? Does creativity reside in some brains and not others?Or is it permission for creativity that exists in some of us and not in others?Beth-Alison is well into adulthood now, and, in case you are curious, she is not another writer. Nor does she have the slightest interest in creating stories. She has, in fact, always thought that being a writer was just about the worst career she could imagine, too much uncertainty for too little income and too much time spent … well, writing. She is a business woman, good with numbers and with all kinds of concepts that would flummox me entirely. And besides being creative in business, she is a creative cook, a creative homemaker, a creative seamstress.Was she simply born with a creative brain, or was it just that she grew up in a home that encouraged her to think outside the box?Encouragement is certainly not the complete answer. I’m convinced that some of us tumble into the world with a buzz in our brains that insists on being expressed. After all, I came from a family that had little use for my creativity. And I still remember the teacher who, after I’d memorized a long poem and recited it to the class, told me I should be using that energy to do something useful like memorizing all the states and their capitols. But an aunt, a writer herself, found my writing important enough to criticize as well as praise. And there were other teachers who valued my words on paper. Without such influences, I might never have learned to value my own gifts. I might not, today, be creative.Why is it important that we as parents, as teachers, as a society encourage creativity? Not just because it’s nice having the arts around. Creativity extends far behind playing a musical instrument or weaving a rug. It’s a survival tool. Creativity is what makes change possible, every kind of change … including those that will, we hope, keep us alive on this planet. And creativity comes in as many different shapes as nature makes human beings, which gives me hope.My stories have their contribution to make, and I’m grateful for what good my writing does. But let’s not forget the creative scientists who are exploring the nature of a speeding comet at this very moment and the creative teachers who, day after day, make learning a joy, and the creative medical workers who save lives and the creative mediators who support peace on all levels and …Perhaps those other little girls, if they had grown up in my house, could even have figured out where to find a straw from a witch’s broom.In which case, the treasure hunt would have been a whole lot more fun.If this topic interests you as it does me, listen to this brief TEDx talk by the extraordinarily creative nonfiction writer, Catherine Thimmesh.  She has great suggestions for teaching kids to “think outside the box.”Enjoy![youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nASvIgSOCxw]