Reinvention Rising
Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 10:21AM 
I WAS A SWEATY LITTLE KID when I first explored the basis of the creative process: combining existing things into new combinations.
Of course, that’s not how I thought of it at the time. Then, I just thought “I hate mowing the lawn and getting covered with grass clippings when I empty them into the trash bag.”
It occurred to me things would be a whole lot easier if I could somehow put the trash bag inside the catcher so that the clippings would fly right into the bag, which I could then remove, tie up, and abandon at the curb as I ran back inside to resume reading “The Secret Agent on Flight 101” or whatever Hardy Boys mystery I was in the grip of at the time. I tinkered with mower and bag briefly, and gave up quickly. (My eureka moment wasn’t accompanied by sufficient mechanical skills to move from idea to innovation.) But I recall vividly what lingered in my mind.
“Maybe someday,” I thought, “I’ll be a ‘reinventor.’”
