Imagination lost..

Yesterday I had to drive home from my uncles to help out with watching my little cousins. The boy is 6 and the little girl is 3. They are great kids and super adorable but it brought me to a flash back Jr year in college to an english class I took with my mentor.
The third week or so we circled up like usual to have discussion and he brought a paper clip in for every one and we went around in a circle stating what a paper clip could be.
The usual answers came out: “paper clip”  “paper weight (a light one)”  “if you open it a scratcher”  “an earring”  then the answers started dwindling.
We all stopped to look then he got out a list and the answers were completely different. “if it was 9 feet tall you could use it as an escape slide”  “it could be a really cool slide”  “if it was really big it could be a 4 way fire pole”  “you can use it as a plank for a ship”.  He then claimed that we lose imagination and our imagination realm gets morphed due to the cynics of modern day.
When I had an immediate flash back to that class I was reminded how brilliant kids kinds were and how sometimes we should revert back to the creativeness we use to have. Don’t take the gift of childhood for granted.