Sunday, February 24, 2013

Legos, Possums, and Robots, Oh My! (Reflection #6)



Back when I was young, I loved to play with Legos. I would lock myself in my room for hours and build pretty much anything I could think of. My mom would have to check up on me some times to make sure I was still in the house, because I would be so quiet and in my own little world. I can remember back to one day, back when I was going to my grandma’s house every day so she could babysit me, and the power went out due to this big rain storm that was going through Illinois. I remember thinking to myself, what am I going to do! With no power, I couldn’t watch my cartoons I have watched every single day for years! It was practically the end of the world for me at that point. But then, my grandma told me that my dad and my uncles used to play with Legos and that there had to be a box full of them somewhere. We went into her really creepy basement, and we found the Mecca of Legos. I could not believe my eyes! There were boxes and boxes of Legos in her basement, with all these new types of blocks and pieces I have never seen. So, what did my grandma and I do for the next 8 hours? You guessed it, we build an entire town out of those Legos, and yes, we did make a legitimate Krispy Kreme donuts shop out of Legos with a working conveyor belt. My papa, what I called my grandpa, came home from work and saw what we have done. He laughed and told us that we were clearly better Lego builders than my dad and his brothers! So, I guess I would say I was a pretty creative kid.
                Now, working at Menards over the summer, I fell into some really odd situations where I had to problem solve and think outside the box. But if I were to pull out a specific time when I had to be creative, it would be the one time I had to run around the garden center to catch a possum that was terrorizing our guests. I tried everything, from shooting water at it, running at it with a broom, but nothing would get it to run out of the garden center. So I devised a plan, or more so a trap. I told one of our guys to find one of the carts we throw the cardboard boxes in to get recycled and to put it in one of the isles. Well, I chased the crazy thing around for a while and eventually got him into the isle. I cornered him into the cart and we hauled out of there with a not so happy possum hissing and trying to swipe at my hands. I took the cart out back to the lumberyard and dumped him in the forest. It was an intense adrenaline rush for me because I was really trying to hurry up and get rid of this thing so I could go home! I probably should have mentioned we were trying to catch this thing all night when we were closing up the store, but the thing was more “creative” than us. All and all, that thing never came back.
                I do not know about you, but who would be able to build a robot suit out of random spare missile and weapons parts with almost no available resources. And do not forget, he was doing this while he was imprisoned. Yes, I am indeed talking about the infamous Tony Stark. The whole beginning of Iron Man is Stark being creative and building a way to break out of being imprisoned by the terrorist. It got him out of there, and it was what started Iron Man.

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