As a girl, I lived out in the country. I remember long, magical summers when my sister and I would run through fields chasing butterflies, roll in alfalfa, wade in the creek, and play hide and seek among tall cornstalks.  

One summer when I was about six, caterpillars were abundant, and I begin collecting them. I doubt I knew that I might be downsizing the butterfly population; I just knew I loved the tickly, furry, fuzzy creatures. 

Soon after I began collecting them relatives visited. My aunt asked, “Carol what are you going to do with them?” 

My perfectly reasonable and creative answer was, “I’m going to make Mom a caterpillar coat!”

When they laughed, asking, “How are you going to do that?” I responded that I wasn’t sure yet, but I would figure it out.

Soon my caterpillar collection became so abundant that I needed a bigger container to store them, so I borrowed my father’s minnow bucket. I left it outside on the porch, adding leaves and milkweed pods for my caterpillars to eat. About a week later, it rained. Hard.

Now, if you know anything about minnow buckets, you know that, when they’re flooded, they’re great for keeping small fish alive in water, but not so great at keeping fluffy caterpillars alive in oxygen. Alas, all hundred or so of my little caterpillars had drowned. 

I’m not sure how mom felt, but I was devastated for my fuzzy friends. Yet I was also half-relieved that the conundrum of how to create a caterpillar coat had been eliminated.*

I think of that caterpillar coat story often because it’s a metaphor for creativity. Often, we come up with a “caterpillar coat” idea, and people laugh, or we’re stymied to find a solution on how to do it,  we don’t have the money to bring it about, or we simply give up on the challenge. This is not bad if it wasn’t a great idea to begin with.

But the real challenge is to differentiate between the caterpillar coat and something truly innovative and world-changing. Sometimes there’s a very fine line between the two, and you might not know the difference until you try it. Just think about all the naysayers who  considered Bill Gates’, Steve Jobs’ and Elon Musks’ ideas “caterpillar coats” in the beginning.