Creative

We are all creative, but by the time we are three or four years old, someone has knocked the creativity out of us. Some people shut up the kids who start to tell stories. Kids dance in their cribs, but someone will insist that they sit still. By the time creative people are ten or twelve, they want to be like everyone else.

~ Maya Angelou

- - - - -

When I was a kid my Aunt Miriam and Uncle Paul had a big white swing on a tree behind their house. One time we had this great idea that we would spring the swing in a circle so the chains twisted it. Then it would unwind and the kid in the swing would get twirled around. It was great. We did it over and over and over again.

And then one time when it was my turn - after we'd each done this about a thousand times - the chains broke. I fell on the ground. That is when I hit it knocked the creativity out of me.

Fortunately, I made a full recovery. Oh and it was the wind that got knocked out of me. I think the creativity was fine. Of course it could have knocked a few other things loose. 

We'll never know if it was swing that did it or the time I fell through the stairs as a toddler onto the basement floor. That's where Bob Dylan got the idea for the song, "Knock, Knock, Knocking on the Basement Floor." Bob Dylan is also creative.