Then you can.

This past weekend my daughter and the rest of the six member team competed in the regional Destination Imagination (DI) tournament. In short, the program is a way to challenge kids to think without boundaries.

The whole process starts each October as the Challenge options are released. After a quick review of the alternatives and ixnaying the mythology related one and the boy centric building challenge, the six member girl team settled on Challenge C – Triple Take Road Show.

Challenge C was fairly straightforward and presented the following detail requirements to the team.

1. Think up a traveling road show idea
2. Present the road show to three distinct imaginary audiences
3. Develop two travel methods used to get to the second and third presentations of the road show.
4. Have a technical spectacle as part of one of the road show performances.
5. Have the presentation run no longer than 8 min.

The rules for Destination Imagination are rather simple:

1. Everything must be kid driven. The adult coaches are just there to sheppard the process.

2. You are not allowed to use chemicals or explosive items

3. If the rules of the challenge don’t say you can’t, then you can.


So the team started the 5 month odyssey of thinking up ideas from scratch, a painfully slow process at the start. Bits and pieces started to come together, a transporter here, a sales idea there and pretty soon the girls had an outline of the road show.

Over the final two months the team put together every aspect of the play including writing the script and creating all props and backdrops. The team was very grateful for the week long snow outage (a first for Texas) that enabled the girls in walking distance of our house to come and work on the props and versions 2 and 3 of the backgrounds. The initial versions met a bad fate.

The morning of the tournament began with the ding of an incoming text. “Lauryn is sick, has been throwing up since 3am – she won’t make the Instant Challenge and may not make the Performance”. I kept looking for the second text message that would say, “Just kidding” but it never arrived. So the team, now down one, went into the Instant Challenge. After that I was quickly coaching Alex on an additional role in the play just in case Lauryn couldn’t make it. Then when talking with Lauryn’s mom, she said that "Lauryn was feeling a little better and didn’t know if I wanted her around the other girls since sh……….” at that I cut her off mid sentence and said, “Get her here! I’ll tell the other girls not to touch her! We need her!” And with that Lauryn was delivered to the team moments before the road show hit the stage.

To set the stage for the performance video you need to know the following:

The girls selected the following three imaginary audiences that they interact with; A family looking to buy a Christmas tree, a Pine Beetle family looking to buy a home and finally, Bigfoot watching an infomercial looking to buy a toothbrush. I’ll leave the travel methods between the scenes as a surprise.

The Performance Video (Triple Use Trees): http://www.flipshare.com/view.aspx?nRecipient=&nFrame=ODA1YTE2N2YtYWFjYy00Yzk1LThkNjctZjUzNGYwOTY4MTJi&nMedia=YTFjNTI1YWUtZWM3NC00OWZjLWE0OTQtNDJjYjZlMDRjZmFk&nT=

In addition to the main challenge performance in DI, the team separately has to work through a surprise ‘Instant Challenge’. The Instant Challenge is one where they don’t know what the challenge will be until they enter the room and are given 5 minutes to work together to solve the problem they have never seen before. The instant challenges crushed the team in prior years. This year was different, they worked beautifully together and creatively answered the spur of the moment challenge.

For all of their hard work and creativity the team was awarded 3rd place (out of the 15 teams in their flight). They were one spot out of going to the state tournament, but since half the team had a conflict for the state tournament weekend, they viewed getting 3rd place as the best possible outcome for the team.

So as we drove home with Alex and Natalie jabbering constantly in the back seat, basking in their success, I asked if it was worth all of the yelling I had tossed their way trying to get the team ready for the tournament? To which Natalie replied, “Oh yea – this (holding up her 3rd place medal) is so much better than sitting through the awards and not getting anything!”

While I don’t blanketly recommend it, sometimes giving kids the rule, “If it doesn’t say you can’t, then you can.” actually works.