At a family picnic for employees of the company where my father worked, they held a contest for children. I was 13, full of enthusiasm, so I 1 myself into it.
The host gave each child a cloth handkerchief and told us the winner would be the one who cast it the 2 . The first throwers, took mighty wind-ups, but when the cloth left their hands, it 3 and landed on the ground a few inches in front of them. The crowd roared with 4 . Not until then did I realize it was not meant to 5 any real skill, but simply for laughs. However, it stimulated my 6 for thinking outside the box.
It 7 me to see the kids throwing harder when the handkerchief always caught the air and died. It was obvious that using the same 8 would not work. Suppose I tied a(an) 9 inside the handkerchief? When they inspected it, I' d be 10 . So I began tying the handkerchief around itself to make it small and 11 packed together to keep it from unfolding. When I approached the line, people were already laughing, 12 a big strong-looking boy like me casting it just a few inches.
I took a long wind-up, and the balled handkerchief 13 off maybe 60 feet away. The laughing 14 in collective shock. I had not broken the rules. What I learned from this contest was that, in order to live creatively, you have to 15 the less-used parts of your brain, and not accept stereotypes(刻板印象), slogans and unquestioned ideas.
