Problem Solving

Some people have used the extraordinary capacity of human problem-solving intelligence to create life-saving vaccines, power a rocket to Mars or write an intricate 4-voice fugue. 

 

Yesterday my granddaughter and I used the same capacity to try to dislodge putty from the trachea of a rubber chicken so it might squawk again. Through ingeniously taping two chopsticks together and a half an hour labor probing down the tube, we indeed extracted most of the putty, but still the poor chicken was mute when we squeezed her. So our next task is to gather our imagination to create an appropriate memorial service for her. 

 

I know my granddaughter is up to the task because of the imaginative tale she told about how the putty got into the chicken in the first place. A first-rate tall tale of the chicken on the ground with its open mouth facing up, the putty stuck to the edge of the table and beginning to droop over until some it fell into the chicken’s mouth. Then she picked up the chicken and in its upright state, the putty flowed down the tube to block the squeezebox that made the chicken squawk when squeezed. I listened respectfully and concluded with, “That’s quite a story.” And left it at that. Oh, and did I mention that this entire chicken disaster happened while she was theoretically on Zoom for online school?

 

That’s life with grandchildren.