When you have children living with you, ordinary household items become extraordinary. Only kids have the huge imagination that can make this transformation possible.

For example, an ordinary paper plate has seen more uses than a bottle of Lysol in a loony bin. It’s a receptacle for wayward beads. It’s a Frisbee, a dog dish, a French hat, and a place to put spare change. Staple two plates together and it’s a UFO. Color it and fill it with dried peas, and youve got a percussion instrument. Attach a Popsicle stick to one side and youve made a barely functional fan.

An ordinary old stick, depending on the size, could be a walking cane, a stud for a primitive fort, a bug-squasher, or a hole digger. Or it could be a magic wand, a flag pole adorned with a former burp rag, or something to whittle with a plastic butter knife.

Over the years, I have seen examples of many ingenious uses for ordinary items, because I have five children. You could’ve provided the same ordinary item to each child, at the same age, and they each would’ve found a unique use for it.

A Dixie cup is one of the most versatile items in our house. For this reason, I always keep some in stock. Not for drinking out of, of course, but for things like an elevator for Polly Pockets, a hat for the cat, or an impromptu terrarium for a just-captured bug. Attach a string between two cups and you have a communication device. I asked my twelve year-old what he would use a paper cup for and he said, I’d put a pin hole in the bottom and use it to view a solar eclipse. I hadn’t thought of that one.

Even certain clothing has peculiar uses when a child gets hold of it. An ordinary gym sock becomes an extraordinary weapon when filled with two or three Hot Wheels and wielded like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle would handle a pair of nunchuks. Unfortunately, when it makes contact with human flesh or a plate glass window, the child is guaranteed an extended stay in his bedroom. It’s not fair! Splinter never sent Michelangelo to his room!

Michelangelo never hit his brother with his socks.

Yeah so don’t be deceived by an innocent pair of socks. They’re only a Hot Wheel or two away from being a lethal weapon.

Let’s not forget the many uses of furniture in a child’s world. The bed is a trampoline, of course, which is why children never want to sleep in their bed. Who wants to sleep when there’s a trampoline in the room? The couch cushions, when not being used to sit on, are the padding for various gymnastic activities. This requires spreading them out on the living room floor. A table with a blanket over it becomes a spare bedroom; one that needs to be defended from siblings of the opposite gender.

You know those strips of fabric that one uses to make pot holders on a plastic loom? Well, when tied end to end, and wound around a bedpost and a door knob at an incline, you have a means of transportation similar to a cable car for your Polly Pockets, Beanie Babies, action figures, and random Happy Meal toys. I just learned that yesterday when trying to untie the various knots used to secure this apparatus. I only ask that they put a note on the door to inform me of their room’s change in status. Something like Cable Car in Use would prevent me from decapitating myself when I walk in unannounced.

I wonder when all of that ingenuity leaves us? It seems to me that we could solve the world’s greatest problems with a little of a child’s imagination. If we gave a child a toothpick, bubblegum, a paper plate, and a bobby pin, he could figure out how to make an ion accelerator if he needed one.