Creativity: A Secret Live-Saving Power
To Get Us Out of A Jam And Into The Gravy
Just to get my mind going, I made up this limerick:
Among our most human activities
Are known to be several festivities.
Though foreign or native
We come up creative
To stimulate our sensitivities.
Humans harness their creativity to help them solve their problems and for artistic expression. I cannot paint a picture, but so far, I am good at figuring out ways to escape hopeless situations.
I have an example of that if you don’t mind listening.
My son, his girlfriend, her mother and grandmother, his mother, and I carpooled to a Sandhills Festival in Muleshoe, Texas. I drove my old used car, and he drove his girlfriend’s grandmother’s new used car. Getting used cars means we pay money to get somebody else’s problems. But that’s what working people do so we can get to work.
And yes, there is a town in Texas named Muleshoe, pronounced “mule-shoe,” not “mu-les-hoe.” Furthermore, the sand in the sandhills is not sand like on the beach or in sacks for concrete.
That sand got blown there from Oklahoma and stayed because it liked Texas better. It was the dust left over from the days of the Dust Bowl. But Muleshoe, Texas couldn’t have a dust dune festival.
Driving back from the festival, the water pump on the new used car went out, and you can’t drive a car without water in the radiator. The disabled car would have to be towed by the other car.
But there was no tow chain or rope or anything.
I considered linking everyone’s belts together, but my son and I had the only belts. So, there was not enough space to tow safely. I thought, “Wire clothes hangers!” But there were none. Nothing was panning out.
So, I walked to the side of the road to say the alcoholic’s prayer. “God, get me out of this one, and I’ll never do it again.”
Regarding praying and being religious, I can’t claim any status or elevation in spiritual affairs. I’m a Levitical lame-o, like the ghost that decided to haunt a church and tried to scare everyone by yelling, “Halle-boo-ya!”
But that night, our plight was heartfelt!
And there, in the dust on the side of the road, was an exposed loop of that yellow, twisted plastic fiber rope with which farmers tie down their cargo. “I wonder how long this is?” I mused as I started to pull the rope out of its sandy surroundings.
It was long enough. That thin, long-buried, unbiodegradable plastic rope pulled us in. Cautioning my son to take off slow and drive without jerking the rope got us into town. I drove the following car in neutral gear without power. The rope broke only twice. Every time I tied it back, I was glad I knew some scout knots.
The story might not prove faith works or that prayer is powerful, but who knows? In a thoughtful situation, during a black night in a disabled vehicle, there was a deliverance of sorts through creative innovation from somewhere.
Sam is a retired drug counselor & keeps his Texas license current. An MA from UTA, he writes about addiction to substances, behaviors, and thistles of the soul.
