Monday, September 14, 2009

a sketch of an etch a sketch...
























why?
this is a mental note post to myself and to those who may like the following sentiment I recently heard on the radio on the way to work.

what?
to paraphrase:"Our minds are like etch-A-sketches, sometimes we get shook"

who?
said by Regina Spektor in an interview on NPR about that pesky phenomenon of having a great idea that you loose before you set pen to paper.

Frankly it happens to me all the time, mostly when I drive or right before I fall asleep. It's a big part of the reason I started this blog: Idea Loss Prevention.

But then it got me thinking about etch-a-sketches and long drives and childhood and the intersection of all three. Our minds need to wander. Our hands need to doodle. I can still remember some of those monumental drives across country. Treading that delicate balance between car sickness and boredom armed only with your imagination... it builds character.

Our little family is about to embark on a big trip. It entails a long flight and lots of hours in a rental car seeing as much of the Pacific northwest we can cram into a week. I bought an etch-a-sketch. My son is currently mastering stair stepping lines and lop-sided squares. Even so, I can't deny the ease of popping a DVD into the laptop on a cross country flight. Frankly leaving the DVD player at home is not a risk I'm willing to take. But I do hope we can bring the etch-a-sketch along and minimize the hours spent in total catatonic tune-out. What can I say I'm nostalgic.

1 comment:

Angela said...

That's a great quote, and one to which I can entirely relate.

Magna Doodles have been my best car toy. Don't leave home without them. Buy new ones the second the screen starts to go. My oldest started using them as soon as he was old enough to hold the stylus and he still loves them.

And every time I see and Etch-a-Sketch, I think of J's friend at VCU who had a wall full of very intricate Etch-a-Sketch art. He mastered the medium. (I could never get past stairs, truth be told!)