Outside of the Box

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I worked in an office. I believe it was Franklin Covey, but very well could have been Discover Card. It's all a distant hazy memory now. However, both of those companies were all touchy feel-y, object lesson-y, team building-y goodness. At one of them, there was a big object lesson on thinking outside of the box. We were divided into two teams and sent to separate offices. Upon arriving, we were instructed to pull an item out of a paper sack and then were given 5 minutes to think of any possible use for it.

The item was a sock.

After 5 minutes, we had the usual suspects of a cleaning rag, a bag, entertainment in the form of a puppet, a warmer of things, a bandage, and variations of those themes. The other group fared about the same. We failed. We could not think outside of the box. And when the facilitator gave us a bunch of other weird and unique uses for a sock, we all shook our heads and oohed and aahed and promptly forgot any but the most obvious uses. Clearly, none of us were innovators.

Which brings me to Nate and Ty. A few days ago, my friend gave me a basket of shells. I brought them home, intending to use them as decorations. Or, at the most bizarre, some sort of art project. I was a little mystified to see the boys like this :

"Roger, Roger! Come in 5 Star General, Tyler"

"Copy that. Proceed, 4 Star General, Nate"

Mom: Tyler, why do you have shells in your ears?
Tyler: These aren't shells, these are Conch Communicators.

It almost frightens me to think of what they might do with a sock.