Creativity and The Shtick

 

Oh yeah, kids.  That's me.  Circa 5th grade.  At a laser light show, apparently.  And that outfit?  Is straight out of Dancer's.

LATELY... it seems as if there have been a number of nonfiction books about creativity.  Basically, how to tap into it and make yourself more creative, etc.  

For instance, this one:

..which tells you (per the NPR book review/interview), that creativity is about interacting with other people and getting out of your comfort zone, etc, etc.  Full disclosure, I haven't read it, so I'm taking their word for it.  Now, agreed- It's sort of interesting to think about where creativity comes from.

But, frankly?
I object.

In short: I do not believe that people develop some sort of creative skill because it seems like fun.  I think that people develop a creative skill to save their damn lives.

If you paid exactly one second's worth of attention in high school science- which is, coincidentally, the exact amount of attention that I paid, which earned me a big shiny "D" on my report card in both physics and chemistry- you know all about Survival of the Fittest and evolution and blahbity-blah.  Basic premise:  If what you've got isn't working?  Better fricking evolve.  Or, be eaten by dinosaurs, or- in this case- middle school students, who are direct descendants of dinosaurs in terms of the speed and ferociousness with which they will rip you limb from limb.
And let me tell you.
From an early age?  What I had wasn't exactly working.

There were so very many problems.
It was pretty clear I wasn't going to be prom queen.  Unless it was a "Carrie"sort of prom queen situation.

And that's cool, because it's like that for, let's say, 80% of the population of any school.  And frankly, I had it a lot better than many.  I was never picked on, and I had some pretty great friends.

(psst!  That guy in the back (eyebrows)?  THAT is the sender of the "True Blue" note.  And, frankly?  I don't think he's the prettiest boy in school OR true blue.  So take THAT twelve years later!)

But here's what happens when you come to this realization: you figure out something else.
What you need is a shtick.
The basic definition of a shtick, straight out of the Oxford English dictionary is: "That thing that you start getting good at when you realize that you're not going to be good at being normal".
Direct quote.
If you are presently in the market for a shtick, here are some popular K-12 oriented options you might want to try out:

Super-Depressed, Brooding Guitar Guy
Qualifications: Must play guitar.  Must be willing to be completely obsessed with self.  Must make absurd faux-deep statements about the nature of life on a fairly regular basis.  Must own a lot of concert t-shirts, including at least one Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon" shirt.  Not expected to finish high school, but if you do, you are automatically promoted to Super-Depressed Brooding College Guitar Guy, and become a fixture in local coffee shops.  The independent coffee shops, I mean.  Obviously.

Band Person
Qualifications: Play in band.
Side note: While I was not in band, this is actually a really good shtick.  Turns out band people have a nice little community.  If shticks were careers, this would be the well-paying, great benefits 9-5 job.

Choir Person
See "Band Person"

Theatre Person
See "Band Person", see "Glee".

Way-Too Nice Kid
Qualifications: Be nice
Job-Related Hazard: You will have 20,000 friends, but no one- and I mean no one- will be the slightest bit interested in dating you.  Your prom date will be whoever gets dumped by their prom date the week before the dance; which is sort of nice, if you like surprises.
To make you feel better: when you get older, and your peers aren't idiots anymore, EVERYONE will want to date you.  Just wait it out.

Joiner Girl
Qualifications: Must care about whales and recycling.
Expectations: Join everything.

These are not exhaustive.  I could have been slutty which, in retrospect, I didn't give enough consideration to...

Either way, they're all coping mechanisms, some more obnoxious than others.  And while the above all have to do mostly with surviving k-12, they eventually- usually- become an actual thing you do with your life.

And this whole theory? This is not just me.

Here's the famous painter Freida Kahlo

She started painting when she was stuck in her bed after a massive bus accident, during which a pole went through her uterus, nearly killing her and making it impossible for her to have kids.

Okay, so being speared in the uterus is slightly more traumatic than my adolescent acne.  But you get the point.  

BEFORE she was an artist?  She was a lawyer or something to that effect.  I'm too lazy to check Wikipedia to confirm that, but trust me.

Here's Natasha Tretheway, our fabulous Poet Laureate

She started writing poetry in college to cope with her mother's death.  

For real.  Creativity = coping mechanism.  

I chose some odd combination of writing and making a joke out of everything.
And, like I said, it was less choice than necessity.
Here are just a few of the reasons I had to come up with a shtick:

1.  I Wore a Leg Brace
For YEARS.
I had Legg-Perthes Disease.
Let me give you this mental image:

Two big pieces of molded plastic that fit around my thighs.  These plastic pieces were attached to metal things, sort of like I was bionic, which attached to a leather strap thing that went around my stomach like a belt.  I was an effing SIGHT, people.
The plastic pieces held my legs out.
Imagine me running in that.  Because I did.  A lot.
I also have this vague memory of actually BREAKING the brace while running, but I can't remember if that's REAL, or if I'm just thinking of Forrest Gump

This also caused me to have to go to the doctor's office once a month or so, where I had to sit on top of a table and put my legs in butterfly position (bottom of left to bottom of right) and push my knees down as far as possible, all while staring at this super creepy poster of a family of lemurs that was taped to the back of the exam room door.  Also, I stayed in the hospital for a while.
As if this horrific vision of me isn't sufficient, it is important to know that I had to sleep in this leg brace, because that seems to be the time during which bodies grow.  The brace was metal and some part of rubbed against some part of me in such a way that it caused me to wet the bed.  Routinely.  And the leather and plastic straps?  Pee doesn't come out of those like it does out of plastic.

What I'm telling you is that I smelled like pee for years.
For the record, the doctor confirmed that it was the brace that was making me wet the bed, so don't start with all this crap about how I wasn't potty trained.

The only saving grace in this story is that, much like my present self, I seemed to be completely unaware that this was weird in any way.
Honestly.  I don't recall feeling bad about it at all.

I wrote all of that before I had a picture; then my dad sent me that picture and I realized, holy hell, to top it all off, I have a freaking MULLET.
Look, even those ducks are scared.
I couldn't have convinced those ducks to get any closer if my entire body had been made of bread...

2.  I Had a Flipping LISP
..which I CAUGHT from my sister.  It has just now, just this very second, occurred to me that there was probably a period of time when these two things- the leg brace and the lisp- overlapped.
Please, imagine yourself talking to me during this period.
I consider this the biggest missed opportunity of my lifetime.
If I could have seen myself then as I see myself now, and all the potential gains involved in being such an effing train wreck, I would have stood in the lobby of a hospital, or on the ground directly outside a liquor store with a tin can and a patch over my eye.  People would have THROWN dollars at me.  I could have paid for college, and had my entire house renovated by Ty Pennington.

 MOVE THAT BUS!

What makes this story a little funnier, and a little sadder, is that I don't seem to have realized that other people could hear the lisp.  Here's one of my fav stories:
Once, in fifth grade, my class was in the library.  It was time for us to go back to the classroom, but it was also time for me to go see Mr. Stefan, the speech therapist.  But I didn't want anyone to KNOW that I went to the speech therapist.  Because, obviously, no one knew I had a lisp.
So, I said to my best friend, Megan, "Hey, I'll race you back to the classroom.  I'll go this way and you go that way!"
It probably sounded like this, though (and I can say this because it was MY lisp, damnit)- "Hey, I'll raythh you back to the clathhroom.  I'll got thith way and you go that way!"
Except- man, I am so damn TRICKY-
 I DIDN'T go to the classroom.
I went to the speech therapist.

Going to the speech therapist was maddening
He had this little machine and you were supposed to repeat the letter "s" (in my case) over and over again.  Then he'd play it back to you, and you were supposed to hear how you were doing it wrong.
Let's talk about that.
Specifically, what the hell is that going to do?
"Hey, Laura, you know how you can't speak correctly?  How about we record it and play it back to you until you have an anxiety attack?  Want to hear how much you suck?  Luckily for you, I have it on tape!"
On all the major holidays, Mr. Stefan gave us gigantic holiday-themed cookies, like giant iced turkey-shaped sugar cookies on Thanksgiving, but I mostly refused to take them because I was so pissed at him about the fact that I had a lisp.
Actually, I was really mean to poor Mr. Stefan.

Anyways, my escape from the library was the greatest plan ever hatched until I got back to the classroom and Megan said, "Where did you go?"
Which I hadn't really counted on.
Listen, people, I can't think of EVERYTHING, okay?

3.  I Wore These Glasses

That pretty much sums that up.
When we asked my mom about these horrors later on, she replied, and I quote,
"Don't ask me.  You guys chose them."
I'm sorry.. am I all of 3 in this photo?!?

Honestly, why do they even MAKE glasses that big?  In case my cheeks sprout a second set of eyes?
The only good thing is that Erin looks WAY crazier in this picture than I do.
And again with the hair.  What it looks like is that my parents just let my hair grow directly down over my face and then, at some point, realized that I couldn't breathe, and that bits of food were getting stuck in there, and at that point they took a pair of child-safe scissors and cut a big hole.

4. I Had Acne.  BAD.
Every high school kid has acne.  But this was different.
One of my favorite acne-related stories was this:
A. My red-headedness makes me super susceptible to sunburn to begin with, but all of the topical cyclenes that they put you on for acne make it way, way worse.
In middle school we had these things called "Super Kid Days"; if you didn't have any "points" (which you got for running in the halls, etc.), then you could attend the quarterly Super Kid Day.  This time, Super Kid Day was an outdoor picnic.  They had a Sno Cone machine and a cotton candy machine and.. other stuff.  Long story short, we were outside in the sun all day, my face covered in one sort of cyclene or another.
You see where this is going.
My face got so burned that it blistered.
In case that didn't hit home with you, what I'm telling you is that I had blisters on my face.

Luckily, the 8th Grade Going Away Dance was later that week.
By that time, the blisters had popped.

Again, I'm telling you that I had popped blisters on my face.
It was a great dance.
I have some pictures from it and, if you saw them, you might turn to me and say, "Laura, I didn't know you went to an all-girls' school".

But I didn't go to an all-girls' school.

B.  I was on Accutane for years upon years.  Accutane, if you're unfamiliar, is like the last-ditch, emergency button, break glass in case of fire acne medicine.  First of all, it costs a trazillion dollars- literally- and each pill comes wrapped in a bubble with this on the outside:

Should you care to delve further into the reasons behind said picture, you will find in your handy dandy warning packet a number of pictures of what your accutane baby will look like.  In short, it won't have ears.

That's not funny.

But it is.

Here's the irony of Accutane.  If it had worked, I might have to concern myself with that warning.  Luckily for me and my fully-eared baby boy, it didn't really work for me, so getting pregnant was never a problem.  For further proof on that, please see exhibit A, the picture from the 8th grade dance.

I took that crap right up through college.  And even in college, that crap didn't work.

One time I was out on a date.  I'd been dating this person for some time.

He looks at me and says, "Can I ask you something?"

It's a good thing I hadn't spent most of my life watching romantic movies like "Dirty Dancing", or "Titanic" or "The Vow" or anything, because then I might have expected this to be a landmark moment.  This was the moment when Channing Tatum/Ryan Reynolds/Whoever would say something very, very charming or seductive. 

You had me at "hello", Laura... You had me at "hello".

I wasn't out with Channing that time, though.

This guy, on the other hand, looked deep into my eyes and said "Can I ask you something?"

In the background, light orchestral music played.

The paper lanterns on the deck swayed in the summer breeze

"Yes," I said.

Somewhere in the distance, the lightning bugs flickered, and he leaned closer and said...

"How long have you had a problem with acne?"

True. Effing. Story.

Here's the good news.  You eventually come out of it.  And when you do, you have a nice little skill that you spent the past 12ish years cultivating whilst trying to ignore whatever weirdness was going on with you.
And you can rest easy, because I am living proof that, when you do, you end up totally normal:

TOTALLY normal.
Win.
Win.


Epilogue:
While writing this, I emailed my dad and said "send me a picture where I look horrifying".
He sent me this:

.. which is interesting, because I don't really think I look all that horrible here.  So I guess that sheds some light on my dad's thoughts about my high school self.

THANKS DAD.

Also, look at Erin and me in our Easter bonnets!!

Me: Yay! Easter! Bunnies!

Erin: Sit down, you fool.