Just My Imagination

When I was a little girl, my sister and I would spend hours playing with Barbie dolls. This was before the Barbie townhouse and convertible. We built homes on our twin beds with furniture we fashioned from objects in our room. Their cars were shoeboxes. We named the dolls and created scenarios for them. We would play for hours during the summer while our mom was at work and pick up the story the next day. Children don’t play like this anymore. They want to see life-like images on computers and television screens.

My mom would take my sister and me to the library and read to us. When I was old enough to go on my own, I’d walk to the library almost every Saturday and spend the day browsing the shelves and reading. I got caught up in the adventures of Little Women, Little House on the Prairie and Encyclopedia Brown. I even tried to understand Shakespeare but I didn’t really appreciate his work until college.

When I was in college I would write letters to my mother at home. This was during the 70s. There was no internet or cell phones so I actually had to write the words. I wrote about my friends and (some of) the things we were doing. When my mom met my friends she said she felt as if she knew them already. I had given her such vivid descriptions of them in my letters.

I have tried to instill the love of the written word and imagination to my children. I don’t know that they’ve ever gotten it. My daughter was never a Barbie girl and my son may lose his thumbs to Xbox. They’re all caught up in social media and instant access via the internet. My daughter has come closest to realize there is a world outside of the internet. She’s introduced me to books I would never have thought to read (Hunger Games!).

I try to tell them that you can lose yourself in a good book and actually imagine yourself there and see the characters. For some reason the first thought that comes to my mind is Jack Torrance hearing the “metallic rattle” of the curtain rings moving across the shower rod in the bathroom in room 217 in The Shining; and OMG, the moving hedges! I couldn’t stand to be in my apartment by myself for days after reading that book.