Creativity

Captain's Log, Stardate 10.15.2009

(Don't forget to weigh in on my podcast poll, which I posted yesterday!)

As I write this, I’ve just come back from church youth group, where I’ve been a youth group leader for 13 years.

Yes, you read that right. And no, I’m not completely insane (although my friends might beg to differ). I think God has given me a gift for working with teens, and since there aren’t many people who can say that, I’ve just run with it. I really like it.

Anyway, one of the games we played with the high schoolers was where Captain Caffeine flashed pictures of household items on the TV (it was a chance for the Captain to use his iPod Nano—he loaded the pics on his iPod and then hooked it up to the TV in the Sunday School room where we had the high school Bible study). The kids had to come up with creative ideas of how to use the items that weren’t conventional.

For example, he showed a (brand new) toilet plunger on the TV screen, and the kids came up with the idea that if someone were talking a lot, you could just pop! them in the mouth to shut them up. (This was aimed at a few girls who tend to talk a lot, so there was general laughter at that one.)

Anyway, he went to me as the “impartial judge” and I have to admit, while some ideas were Very Lame, some were rather creative.

Where do they come up with this stuff???

So where did my creativity go? And when did I lose it? Sometime in the ahem years since I was a teenager?

Granted, I’m not in the same environment as these kids. I don’t go to their schools, I certainly don’t spend as much time IMing and playing games on Facebook, and while I watch some of the same TV shows, I’m sorry, but I have to draw the line at One Tree Hill and Vampire Diaries (just too much teenage angst for me to stomach. After all, I continue to be very relieved I am no longer a teenager).

(Although a few of them and I do like to rehash the past week’s episode of Glee!)

Where I can dip into that teenaged well of wild imaginings and creative connections? And can I dip while avoiding the emotional angst of caring more about zits than a chem final?

Do any of you have teens? Do you know what I’m talking about?

And no, you may not mail your teens to me!