There are many ways to be creative and I was given an interesting challenge this month.

At work, I have a friend R. has a sister who has breast cancer. R’s sister decided to shave off her hair before it fell out from the kimo-therapy. In support to her sister, R decided to shave her own head. She then began raise money for cancer campaign at work and decided to do the hair shaving at work. My company is very good about matching donation funds.

She asked that I do the shaving because she knew I would make it entertaining. This is where my theme for today’s creativity project comes from. If we show creativity one time, can we do it again and thus avoid becoming known as a one trick pony? R expected for me to make the event of cutting her hair to be memorable. So what can I do? I have a hard time being intentionally funny.

I already knew that I wanted to at least cut her hair into a mohoack before making her completely bald because I would just like to see that. I also wanted to make some kind of race car sounds as I cut her hair to show how fun it was. I dropped the idea of making a check board out of squares of cut hair because of logistics. It was the day of the event that I came up with a new idea. Shortly before the ‘cutting’ I cut some of my own hair and stuck it on a roll of transparent tape so that it would look like a mustache. I put on an apron left over from a visit to the church cannery and…

I entered the room decked out in white and talking in a French accent. I became R’s French hair designer. The collection of employees laughed at that. They also seemed to enjoy my sounds affects as I made circles in my friends hair as I cut it. At the very end I had the mohack like I wanted before cutting it completely off.

So my friend made a memorable day but showing her devotion to her sister by whacking off her hair. I contributed by giving her a very bad imitation of a French hair stylist. She seemed to be glad it was over with, as my friend was getting nervous about losing her hair.

The point of this story is that there are many ways to show creativity. I try to do it in writing stories, articles and books and in storytelling. Sometimes I will try to create a joke or make up an invention. Some of my coworkers show creativity by writing new code for new or improved applications. We all show creativity in our own ways.