Imagination Station

Well, kiddies, in an effort to get back to normalcy after my dad’s untimely passing, I’m back to the blog.

And here’s my question for you: Why is it that imagination in young children is encouraged but imagination in grown-ups must be stamped out like a spider found in your bed?

Consider this: When you are a child, you have imaginary friends. You host imaginary friend tea parties. You build stuff out of lego and while it looks like stuff built from lego, you pretend it’s a mansion, a shopping mall, a McDonald’s. Your parents ooh and ahh over it and brag to all their friends how imaginative you are. You’re so creative and bright. Why, just the other day, you put a tennis ball in a sock, tied a string around it and walked it around the house, pretending it was a dog. How cute!! How inventive!!

Flash foward twenty years later and anyone with a hair of creativity left on their head is considered a whack job. If my sister came home tonight and found me having a tea party with chairs set up for my teddy and my cabbage patch kid, Addie, she’d call the men in the white coats. If I decided I wanted to play dress up (in my own clothes, no less!) it would be considered odd, crazy and maybe even a little scary. If I put on my makeup like Baby Jane, Jenge would call the cops.

So what happened? What’s the difference? Why are children allowed to ‘play pretend’ but grown-ups can’t? Don’t you think we need it more? Who has more stress? A four year old who doesn’t know how to spell ‘mortgage’ or me with a full time job, bills to pay and an hour long commute? Can you imagine how much fun it would be to have a pretend tea party as an adult? Not only could you serve REAL TEA and SCONES but you have WAY BETTER imaginary guests. No longer would I have to invite Teddy and Addie, I could pretend it was Jake Gyllenhall and Dr. Daniel Jackson from Stargate (Shut it! It’s MY TEA PARTY!!) and they could be arguing over which one of them I should choose. Who could buy me prettier things? Who would run out at midnight to get Coke Zero when I ran out? Who would mow the lawn and see if they could get the grass in front of my house to come back to life? Who could pay off my mortgage first?

It would be THE BEST TEA PARTY EVER!!