This morning my family was awakened by the neighbors’ gardener, who considered it both necessary and appropriate to run a leaf blower for 35 minutes straight at a very early hour. While discussing the issue with my son over breakfast, he reminded me of the best (or in his words, only good) use of a leafblower either of us had ever seen.
Last autumn, I looked out the window and saw my elderly neighbor running a leafblower. He had it pointed upward, and was using it to blow the last few leaves off the liquid amber tree in his yard. When he finished, he put the leafblower back in his garage and raked the yard – for the final time that autumn.
My son also witnessed this, and had one word to describe it: Awesome.
I have to agree.
If anyone had asked me why my elderly neighbor had a leafblower, I would have said, “to save time and energy raking” – but I never once saw him use it to clear the lawn. In fact, he raked that lawn every weekend all autumn long. Instead, he used the leafblower in a way I would never have expected, to my impressed amusement and my son’s obvious delight. As a writer, it makes me realize the importance of thinking outside the box. Anyone can use a leafblower to clear the lawn. It takes a special way of looking at the world to see it in another way.
Here’s to thinking outside the bin.
Thinking outside the box is a serious issue not only in our country but the entire world. We need more unique thinking and less of the static thinking that is mostly taught today.
No kidding. That’s a big benefit of homeschool too – I can teach my son to think instead of having him learn to parrot someone’s party line. A lot of people accuse homeschool parents of wanting to keep their kids from thinking for themselves, but at least in our house it’s exactly the opposite. (Which is a good thing, even if I sometimes have to remind myself of it…lol).