Kids at play

I was walking home from work the other day and stumbled upon a mother with her 3-4 year old son. While walking, the boy suddenly plopped down to the grown—legs crossed—and starting drawing on the pavement with chalk his mother had provided. His mom stood patiently as he scribbled.

A minute later, he sat up and continued walking until plopping back to the grown again, several feet from his last slab of concrete canvas. At this point, I had caught up with them and smiled back at the artsy looking mom as I flew past.

It wasn’t until the following morning, when I was going back to work, that I took the time to admire the child’s artwork.
His art had balance, and repetition, and although the pieces were not all together, they interacted with each other and felt uniform. For example, one drawing appeared to be a balloon sun—a circle with triangle rays surrounding, and a line representing a string. A few feet later, he did the exact same drawing, only in reverse. So the string from the two balloon suns were between the circular shapes.

It may not seem like much, but for his young mind to consider how two objects interacted with each other takes a certain something, and it shows promise for a creative future.

Me as a child

Seeing this kid reminded me of myself when I was younger, and how a lot of what I do now for a living was oozing out of me when I was a kid. One example of this was how I use to take apart everything.

moter_vehichleThis is called a Power Wheels Fisher-Price Arctic Cat Prowler. Now, I didn’t have this particular model as a kid, but I had something pretty similar to it. These things start at about $200 now-a-days, and I’m sure it wasn’t that cheap when I was young either.

What I did to my expensive Christmas gift, my dad discovered when he pulled up to the house from work one day, was took the vehicle apart to the point of no return. Piece by piece, I had removed plastic coverings, wires, the battery, and everything that looked interesting, until there was nothing of interest to look at anymore.

I sat on the ground smiling—Philips screwdriver in hand—as my dad approached me and asked, “Why did you do this?”

My response: “I wanted to see how it worked.”

Years later, while I was in high school, I created a fan site for the anime Dragonball Z. Not understanding how to code a web site, I simply stole the code from another fan site and restyled it. However, after I had stole the code, I went through it line by line, removing things and adding things to figure out what did what.

See the similarities? And to this day, I still want to know the what, why, and the how of things that interest me.

Peek back into your past and I’m sure you’ll find a seed that has now fully bloomed into a career or a passion.