curse you Mrs. Singleton

I was cruising along innocently enough until the 8th grade came.

It was bad enough that this brought on my chubby phase (The basketball team's bench was up on a stage so when you subbed out, you had to hop up on the stage...this was quite the task for me in 8th grade!)

But no...chubbiness was not the biggest life problem for me...It was American History. I don't know why I remember this, but my teacher was Mrs. Singleton and she was rather eclectic...zany...psychotic even.

But she challenged her students to some seriously outside-the-box thinking, projects, and concepts. In fact, she was the first one to jade me to the real Christopher Columbus! (Traumatizing.)

But worst of all, she forced us to be creative. I remember to this day doing a research project and presentation on the development of warfare/weaponry in Early U.S. History...and I owned this thing...Had cardboard cut out in the shape of a cannon...steps to making a cannon ball labeled on a stack of paper cannon balls...Got an A on the project and she even pulled it out of the pile and said, "This is what I'm looking for" to the whole class. Inflated my ego and unleashed something that I hadn't really pinpointed its epicenter until tonight.

She tapped into a creative gene that torments me. The creativity rarely happens well in advance of when something needs to be completed. It rarely happens at a decent hour of the day (hence I'm up at 1:30 a.m. working on an idea). This is maybe the greatest curse and the greatest gift God has ingrained in me. It helps me articulate important ideas and visions in ways that are memorable and lasting...but it also is not something that can be turned on and off...Hence when its on...I have to ride it!

So whether its teaching the Old Testament Tabernacle with Legos, presenting communion with only one shoe on, or coming up with a campaign slogan to help raise awareness of poverty in Kenya, that's the life of a guy with a flair of unorthodoxy.

What is your biggest gift/curse?