Imaginations Gone Wild
It was my daughter’s turn to be the Seeker the other night as we played Hide-and-Seek. (Not Quidditch) She was nowhere to be found.
“Where is she?” I asked my son.
“Oh, she’s in the corner laying eggs.” Spoken very casually, as if that were an everyday occurrence.
And there she was, nestled in our “pillow corner,” where afghans and cushions vie for space. She had made herself a nest, and was, apparently, a chicken.
Once I got done laughing, I didn’t stop smiling. The whole scenario just made me happy. Why? Because of the imagination. Kids just can’t stop making completely ordinary things turn into whatever they like.
My son has been obsessed with baseball since he was four years old and I took him to the first Bluffton University baseball game of the season. I thought we’d be leaving after the third inning or so, but no – we had to stay until the last out had been made and the infield was being swept. For the next months everything that could possibly become a bat was held in his hands and used as one. Pencils, long balloons, spoons, jump ropes. You name it, it had to do with baseball.
My daughter doesn’t really care about baseball. What she cares about are relationships. Families. Everything – and I mean everything – becomes moms and dads and babies. We got a new computer the other day. The old one, along with all of its cables and accessories and a severely outdated scanner were sitting on the kitchen table. When it got to be her turn to play a game on the new computer, she said, “No, I’d rather play cords.” Yes, the cables from the computer had become a family, and were living on the old scanner.
Children have this wonderful ability to make up stories about what they’re interested in. I like to think I have a good imagination, as most writers do, but mine pales in comparison to what my kids come up with. I think as an adult I limit myself sometimes to what really could be, or “should” be. But really, isn’t fiction-writing about coming up with something new within an understandable format? I mean, sure, they were computer cables, but my daughter knew exactly which ones were the parents and which ones were the kids. No doubt in her mind.
So I’m trying to learn a lesson from my kids and let my imagination go. Because who knows where it might lead me? After all, editors want “original” characters with “fresh” voices.
Who’s to say there’s not a place for a cord family who has a baseball-playing chicken for a pet?
