Your Imagination at Work


When I was younger, around age 8, I can remember every Sunday afternoon my dad would mow our yard and weed trim it as well. I can remember I would always want to help him and act like I was mowing as well. My dad bought be a toy mower and weed trimmer and I can remember always helping him make the yard look better by following next to him with my mower. Every Sunday he would mow I would ask him if he needed my help and of course he said yes. I can remember walking next to him or behind him as he mowed and I would pretend that my mower was making sure it was cutting all the pieces of grass that my dad missed. I also remember when my dad replaced our real mower with a new one. I asked him if we could replace mine as well because it was time for an upgrade, and of course I got a new one. I looked forward to helping "mow" every Sunday and in my imagination I was helping my dad by following him and keeping him company-and of course trying to be just like him.

As an adult, creativity is something we do all the time and it is something that can help us solve problems when we need help the most. Over Christmas break I worked at the feedmill that I have worked at for the past five years and I ran into a situation that needed immediate attention and creativeness. I was mixing feed in our mixer and the liquid fat switch had been running without me knowing. When I walked over to the mixer their was fat all over the floor and flowing out of the mixer. First, I knew this wasn't good because I could not waste all of this fat. Second, I knew I had to clean this up quickly before it stuck to the floor too long to where I would not be able to get it up easily. So I took ground corn that was already in a pile on the floor and I shoveled it onto the fat. I let it soak up for about an hour and then I took a scrapper and was able to get all of the fat off of the floor by using the ground corn to stick to it. Next, I wanted to make sure the ground corn and fat would not go to waste so I ran it through an auger and put it back into the mixer. Pig feed uses ground corn and fat so I was able to use my mess with the next feed order. Besides the time it took me to clean up the mess, nothing was wasted in terms of feed material. I felt like a messy situation turned into a successful clean up.

The most recent superhero moment I can remember when someone thought on their feet quickly was in the Captain America film. Steve was in the alley and in a fight and needed to defend himself quickly so he used a trash can lid to defend himself. I thought it was creative because he worked with what he had around him and used something that would later defend him when he became Captain America.