“Everybody is a Genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” -Albert Einstein.  

When I was about 10 years old, my mother told my sisters and me a story about how she always dreamed of having a swing in her front yard. She dreamed of relaxing, soaking up the sun, and waiting for us kids to come home after school. Before Mother’s Day arrived that year my stepdad bought her a swing to surprise her when she got home from an out-of-town trip. Little did we know how torturous this task would be to assemble.

This wasn’t the first time I helped my mom or stepdad on a project around the house, so I had a pretty good understanding of how things needed to be organized before getting started. We found that the directions were in another language when we opened the box – the company didn’t include the English version in the package. This was before Google was a thing, so we were on our own with only hours until my mom would be home. I remember my stepdad being so frustrated thinking the surprise was going to be ruined.

I trucked on when he went inside the house, putting pieces together based on the pictures. When he came back out, he had expected me to have ditched him to go play with my friends, so he was astonished when he saw what I had accomplished. Putting the rest of it together was not easy by any means and took multiple hours, but I am glad that I saw it through.

My mother’s face was priceless when she drove into the driveway that evening, which made our hard work completely worth it. This swing still stands strong and has been used every summer for the past 20+ years. Helping with this project not only provided me with a memorable experience that my stepdad reminds me of often but taught me that if a problem can’t be solved one way to approach it with a different perspective.