When I was in fourth grade, I got rejected from my elementary school’s gifted and talented program. My math score was too low, and I also failed in one other key area: creativity.
I wish I could remember the specifics of the creativity test the woman administering it gave me. All I remember was I asked to make up a story at one point, and at another point she showed me a picture and I was encouraged to say what the image looked like.
It was a blob, rounded on top and squiggly on the bottom, and I was probably supposed to say it looked like an alien or something, maybe an alien named Fern who would come take my family on a wild adventure. Or something else, you know, creative.
Instead I said the first thing that came to mind, what it looked like to me.
“It’s a chandelier.”
This was the start of my uncreative life.
Never mind that I was probably always going to fail the test. I’m not terribly good at thinking on my feet, and I’ve always been more of a writer, not a let-me-randomly-launch-into-an-alien-story-out-loud type. Never mind that I’d been an incurable daydreamer since at least age seven, making up stories in my head every day, usually romantic ones, so often that it was like breathing; I didn’t even realize I was doing it most of the time.
But, no: I was suddenly destined to be one of those noncreative schlubs standing in the line at the DMV during my lunch hour from my desk job while some ultra creative guy somewhere was blasting classical music and throwing a bucket of red paint on a big canvass. I was uncreative.
I think creativity is bullshit. At least the way our culture views it, like it’s something some people have and others don’t, like a vacation home or retirement plan.
I don’t mean to imply that all gifted and talented programs that recognize kids’ intelligence and creativity are useless. I have friends who’ve experienced these programs and found them to be encouraging and inspiring and fostering of wonderful connections. I just wonder if we could recognize that other kids could benefit from the gifted resources too, not just the ones who test as creative, but those that are creative in ways we don’t always measure.
I’ve talked a little here about being a special needs mom. One of the more painful experiences I had when we were realizing something was not right with my son’s development was being around other parents at playgroups. “He’s so, so smart,” a mom would say about her kid as we stood in clumps around the playground. And another mom would chime in to say the same about her offspring. And then another. All these kids were brilliant. In my more bitter moments, I thought to myself, That’s just not statistically possible.
But I was wrong to think that.
We all know the bell curves, right? The graphs that show us that most folks are in the big lump in the middle on many traits, average in intelligence and maybe creativity and whatever else. And then there are outliers: at the low end, of course, but also at the far right. The geniuses. The paint-splattering artists.
But at least with creativity and perhaps with intelligence too, this is flawed. There are multiple intelligences, and a zillion and one ways to be creative. A lot of people would’ve flunked the creativity test like I did. But maybe some of them can look at the underside of a car and tell you how to rewire it to make it go crazy fast. Maybe some of them would have seen the round squiggly thing as a chandelier and then also drawn you a picture of a room that would match it perfectly. Those are both creative.
Not everyone paints or can tell us the backstory of Fern the Alien, but we all are creative in some way. Or maybe many ways. Cooking. Piano. Writing. Storytelling at a party. Party planning. Squirrel collages. Or simply seeing the world in a way that’s uniquely ours.
It’s time we recognized that, respected it, and fostered it. If not with us adults, then at least with our kids.