This week I committed to paying a visit on my lunch hour to someone who can inspire me to think differently. The three-year-old Godson. We’ll call these weekly lunchtime interludes #CreativeThursdays.
“What’s this for?” he asked, landing a black plastic casing with controls on it in my hands. It was clearly the remote control of what I assumed was a remote control car.
There clearly was no car. Instead we had a black box that controlled nothing. I was stumped. His grandmother came to the rescue. The situation was worse than I thought. It was the remote control for a non-existent helicopter his mother had bought his father.
Remote control without anything to control
Making it clear it was a remote control for a helicopter that wasn’t one of his helicopters wasn’t enough. Who isn’t inquisitive at three years of age? He wanted to know how the controls worked. There was one control that could be flicked up and down; the other from left to right.
There was only one thing for it. I could only show him how to operate a helicopter from the cockpit of a helicopter. We moved to the two seater sofa. In front of us was a mat with a box of toys including large coloured Lego-like bricks, tiny dinosaurs and the random bric a brac that children love.
I only had an hour for lunch, and between eating and getting to and from work that didn’t leave much time for teaching someone all about helicopters.
Up, up in the air
All I had to go on was the controls in our hands, a far flung memory of a helicopter trip somewhere over the Northern Territory in Australia, and the mat at our feet.
And so together we sat in the helicopter and created an imaginary world around us. I had seen camels below me on my helicopter trip, tiny, beautiful against the landscape. And so they reappeared below is, looking up and making funny noises as our helicopter passed overhead.
Red sky thinking
He learnt how to move the helicopter up and down using the controls. We place the green bricks on the mat, so they stood tall like trees far below us. For a moment it was Jurassic Park as the dinosaurs were thrown in the mix, only to be quickly killed off by my co-pilot. The blue bricks we placed above our heads briefly to show that yes we were truly up in the sky. He grabbed a red brick and “there’s a red sky.” He wasn’t wrong. How often do we say “red sky at night, sailor’s delight”?
Flying a helicopter is one thing, landing it is another. A spotted a table tennis bat and placed it on the mat. Our helipad. So we practiced landing the helicopter carefully using the controls. Quickly the helipad disappeared (thrown back into the box). The show must go on and by getting rid of the helipad it was clear to the Godson that we would be back up into the skies until I had to go back to work.
Key take aways:
- Sometimes having nothing (the missing helicopter) gives you the chance to have a more in-depth experience.
- Perspective can easily be achieved, just use your imagination and draw on memories, experiences and tools to hand.
- Red sky thinking is a version of blue sky thinking that is more inclusive and is more grounded in reality.
