Daydreams are better than video games, theme parks, books, comics, Shakespeare in the Park or even big-budget movies. In the late seventies and early eighties, I realized there was nothing I dreaded more than being bored.
Home Alone.
Too much time on my hands.
The internet not existing.
Stories from books and movies took on their own life in my head while I waited half a year for something new in the local theater.
I don’t remember if I started daydreaming on purpose, or if it just happened.
Those were the days of Atari Pong (if you knew someone who had a console), maybe Space Invaders if you could score a roll of quarters and a ride to the arcade. Mostly we ran around the neighborhood playing war, or cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians (and guess what, the Indians were our heroes every bit as much as the cowboys were. We didn’t know back then to call them Native Americans). We rode our BMX bikes over the dirt hills around construction lots and built dams in the gutters to see how big of a street lake we could make.
We discovered books, movie matinees, and holy smokes—HBO and MTV. Dungeons and Dragons, cars, girls, jobs, post-secondary schools, and were unceremoniously betrayed by adulthood.
None of that killed the ability to daydream. Maybe CGI and lazy Hollywood scriptwriting stole some of our imagination, maybe not.
I still daydream far too much. When the world is shitty and people are mean and I just want to step through the wardrobe to Narnia/Cimmeria/Middle Earth/Tatooine where the tools of the imagination are free, powerful, and bright as day. I don’t even have to pay a monthly subscription fee or worry about social media judgment of my gallivanting thoughts.
Excuse me, I have a dragon to fight.
Until next time. Love your neighbor, forgive your enemies. Try to empathize with someone who is totally different from you. Be good, do good.
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