Imagination

Last week I taught my third grade students about Picasso. Yep, the guy who made crazy cubism paintings with eyes where noses should be and noses where eyes should be. And they loved it. (See above picture as evidence - they so enjoyed making their own "Picassos"!)

So today we continued the discussion about imagination - after deciding last week that Picasso must have had a pretty big imagination. I asked them what they pretended to be or where they pretended to go when they played. Just one said they didn't pretend at all. And I told her that made me sad because I loved to pretend. I love to imagine myself in other places, doing other things. In fact, that's one of the things that lead me to writing. And to moving to Los Angeles.

And this discussion got me thinking about how my parents raised me to use my imagination and how some kids don't ever get that encouragement. I remember playing games with my parents that didn't involve any controllers or electronic devices. I remember running through the cemetary with my dad playing war when I was little with just a stick and my finger as a gun, hiding behind trees. I remember my mom encouraging Angela and I to close our eyes and imagine what land we'd go to every night when we lay in bed. We'd go to all different lands, lands she'd describe, lands we'd describe. And it was all pretend. All imagination.

I am so grateful that I grew up being encouraged to stretch my mind, to know about worlds other than my own. One of my favorite reading experiences growing up was Jurassic Park. It came out in 1990 and I remember reading it not too long after that, before the movie came out. I remember laying in my bed in the hot, humid summer nights before we had central air, dreaming of being on that island with dinosaurs. So much so that I had nightmares that baby velociraptors were chasing me.

For the past few weeks I've been doing a project - I've been attempting to come up an idea for a television show or a movie every single day. This has stretched my imagination beyond belief. But it's fun. To create stories and worlds that never existed, that may some day exist on a screen because I dared to dream of them. Dared to use my imagination...