Personal Experience of a Explorer in Solving a Real World Problem - Essay Example

Explorers' role in a problem situation was described by Roger Von Oech in his book A Kick in the Seat of the Pants: Using Your Explorer, Artist, Judge, and Warrior to Be More Creative are known for its role to search for materials with which to make new ideas. They are the resourceful people in the group who provide the materials to be able to transform into original ideas that could solve a given problem (1986).  

For food, we bring ready-to-open canned goods because of their convenience. Except for this one instance when one of my brilliant cousins did the grocery and chose to buy canned goods which do not have the automatic opener (the protruding level-like thing that we just have to pull to open the can).

Now we are at the camping site, miles away from home, and in the middle of the night, starving and we are presented with a problem: how can we eat our canned goods when there is no opener? No one also brought a can opener because we are used to the idea that canned goods have their opener. It was a problem-solving situation. Our uncle threw the problem at us for us to find a solution. The solutions that were presented ranged from anecdotal to ridiculous to irritating. A cousin proposed that we skip dinner for the night as a means to fast.

I was hungry and so are other cousins so nobody agreed with his idea. Another bright idea from a cousin who could put us all in danger was putting the canned goods on fire hoping that the heat inside will open the can itself. We are worried however that it might explode or we might just render the food inedible by setting the can on fire. Another idea that was suggested was to smash the can so that it will open. For sure it will open only so that we also cannot eat its contents. Until Jim made his typical smirk which we already know he is into something.

He brought out his fork and put it on the lid of the canned good (it was spam, I think). When Mark gets it, he immediately jumps out of his seat and used the tip of the spoon as a knife. Yes, it can cut the lid of canned food although it took a while compared to a regular knife. Without my explorer cousin Jim, we would have ended up starving that night.