Like every new parent we had invested in an analog "video camera" back in the days when our first son was born (maybe 2001). This was the one with the tiny casettes etc., the type that is extinct now. Anyway, after recording hours and hours of baby footage, I promptly lost the electrical charger that was necessary to operate this camera.

Now this is one of the chargers that has complicated and unique pins on the other end, and you pretty much cannot fit any another charger on it. In comes my second son and his hobby is - yes, accumulating chargers. Like every American household, we also have a pretty decent collection of chargers for things that worked at one time or another, but are now compleletely defunct. And this little guy collects them, that's what he does. Several times I have berated him about this (wires everywhere in the living room!); but the other day, this utterly meaningless occupation bore fruit.

And to my utter amazement, this 4 year old pops into the garage, rummages through old boxes (like he always does), and rettrieves a charger that looks almost exactly like the one I had lost (but its not the same one). I put it in the video camera, and it worked! We spent a highly enjoyable evening watching videos of my 8 yr old evolving from a meningless blob into an actual person (much to his chagrin). But this got me thinking.

Hypothetically speaking, I have no doubt that my 4 year old's grant application ("collecting and characterizing electrical charging units") would be stamped "descriptive", and triaged. And yet, if he was not driven by his internal curiosity for chargers, we may have never seen my boys recite poetry in the bathroom.

Something to think about.....