Imagination

I've been thinking lately how cool the imagination is and that we all have been given one. With it, I've created so many things to entertain myself. When i was small, I used to live in the pantry. I shut myself in, hung a sign on the wall that said "Home, Sweet Home" and required people to knock on the pantry door if they wanted to come in. I had a cushion or chair or bed of some kind and i would stay there for hours. I was able to be entertained by all the things of mystery that resided on the pantry shelves. Trinkets and gadgets and weird things collected over a period of years. Seriously, there was an endless amount of cool things inside, not to mention food. I mean, give me a toilet and i was set. And hey, we kept a bunch of bowls in there too, and air freshener, for that matter. So there you go.

With that, there is something about creating your own little dwelling as a child. I guess there is this innate need for some place to call our own, even at a super young age. This is why treehouses and playhouses are so fun. We had both. This list also expanded to include:

The bushes out front. My sister and i would sit in them in the wintertime in our snowpants and boots and gloves and fat hats and sit on the soft snow until it got to our little tushes. Also, the bushes out back where we did basically the same thing.

Inside the lilac bush. We would find a hole and bring in a blanket to sit on. We'd bring snacks and just sit there, loving our secret place.


Inside the pasture. The grass was brown and tall and totally hid us from everyone. Why did we love being hidden? Why was it so special?

Snow forts. If there is one thing i love in this world, it is forts. I defy the kid in me to ever stop liking them. It will never happen. The snow plow man would push all the snow on the street in a bit pile by my house and we'd get busy making the fort. We used to bring snacks and capri suns and store them in the refrigerated walls.


My imagination has shown me what it might be like if gravity were reversed. I used to lay upside down over a couch and see all the sweet space on the ceiling that would be perfect for roller skating. Man! If only gravity could be reversed for a second. Except.. it would only be my own gravity. Anyway,the day it does happen, I've got my skates ready.

I think it's extremely important to always be exercising one's imagination. Do not allow it to become dormant. I think this is one reason why I have always had such entertaining dreams. Since i am a geek I record my dreams in my journal so maybe i'll post a dream post soon.

One time I asked my sister, "What if you woke up one morning and you had a hunchback?" Think about that for a minute.

However, my imagination does betray me from time to time. For this reason, I cannot watch scary movies, something I used to like. But then one pivotal movie ruined it all. What movie is that? The Ring. Yeah, how old was I? Like 22. Because I have such a lively imagination, I take scary movies, particularly images therein, and my mind likes to reproduce them at the most inconvenient times and moments, such as: In the dark basement. Then, when I'm in the dark basement, I might see an image that vaguely resembles a scary scene in the movie and I disort what i see to look JUST LIKE IT which freaks me out. Another place is when I can see my reflection but only dimly. My imagination is partcularly cruel with this. For some reason, i feel compelled to make scary faces in dimly lit mirrors and end up scaring myself so bad I have to run and turn on the lights and then make pleasant faces in the mirror for a few minutes, just to get a nice image in my mind. So there are drawbacks to the imagination.

One of my wishes is to be able to shrink to microscopic size and go inside my own body to look at everything that's going on. I feel my heart, I continue to be alive, so I know it's pumping, but what does it LOOK like as it's pumping? Side note on hearts: Do you ever feel bad for your heart, that it never gets a rest? It just pumps and pumps and pumps, all the time, never stopping, for years and years! It's kind of the same thing for fish. I feel bad that the fish has to be in water ALL the time. I just feel bad that it would be constantly cold. How could you sleep like that? It could never get comfortable.

Imagination. It's neverending. It's limitless. I can take it with me wherever I go. It's always there, whispering in my ear, "use me. I'm fun." And indeed it is. Indeed...it...is.