Countdown

I am not a creative genius, but apparently 98 percent of the world’s five-year-olds are. I read this in a book. 

In the book it says they did a study. They tested the same five-year-olds a few years later and the creative-genius-ness had leaked out of half of them. By the time the group made it to adulthood, it was 2 percent. What happens during that time? Who knows. School and thinking you have to come up with the particular right answer? Social pressure and not wanting to stand out like a weirdo? Creative geniuses don’t care if they sound like weirdos. 

I was chatting about this with a preschool teacher who was visiting the library with her class of five-year-olds. The five-year-olds were skipping around shaking tambourines. They didn’t seem to care about coming up with the right answer or worrying if they looked like weirdos. The librarian had given me a tambourine to shake, and I shook it and felt like a weirdo. 

Why are so many five-year-olds creative geniuses? the preschool teacher asked me.  

They think outside of the box, I said. They don’t even know there is a box.

Meanwhile, I was feeling jittery. I can’t remember if I wrote about this, but my husband is making plans to retire. He has a countdown on his phone. The number at this moment is two months, 7 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes and 42 seconds. 

41 seconds. 38. 

35. 

Shh. Don’t tell anyone. He hasn’t told people at his work yet. Also, he might still change his mind. He is leaving his options open. 

I am keeping my options open too. It hit me that every decade of our lives, we have shaken things up. We moved to different states, tried out different houses and neighborhoods, had children, adopted pets. My husband has had a job with the same company for thirty-six years, but during that time, I’ve had multiple jobs. I was a high school English teacher, a PTA mom, a clerk at a children’s bookstore, an author who went on a book tour through California and spur of the moment, got a tattoo of a foot on my foot. 

I’ve never stayed at the same job for more than seven years. Unless you count motherhood and writing. Which, or course, I do. But listen, I have worked at my present library job for seven years. I don’t know what I’m trying to say here. 

The end of another decade is looming. The world is nutty. Some people I loved have passed on. The jittery feeling is telling me it’s time to make a change. Think outside of the box. Or, forget the box. 

I am not a creative genius, and I am a light-years-away from being a five-year-old, but standing here shaking my tambourine, I have a sudden desire to skip.