By Mark Bauer/se news editor
It’s a rifle, he would say.
Now it’s a fishing pole.
Even still, it’s a walking cane.
In reality, it’s only a small tree branch. What’s going on at the front of the classroom isn’t a magic trick or an illusion. My Art Appreciation professor is attempting to demonstrate how to exercise our imaginations.
And based on the classroom’s response, I would say that it has been quite some time since any real imagining has taken place. Collectively, there is probably about as much pretending going on as there are underpants in Britney Spears’ closet.
One girl in particular is having an especially difficult time chewing on the idea that the stick in front of her is a flute, “I don’t get it,” she said. “It’s just a stick.”
Au contraire, the stick can be whatever you make it out to be. The sky is literally the limit. Unless, of course, you imagine the stick is a rocket …
But what does this say about my generation? Is it an indictment of our culture? Is it possible that while we are being molded and cultivated into a product of civility to be thrown into society, we are stripped of our ability to pretend, to imagine, to think outside the box?
Children have an amazing ability to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary, an ability that seems to get lost somewhere in the grade school years. Because, let’s just call it as it is—imagination is out, and the cynical lenses from which we view the world are in.
Over the course of the next few weeks, my goal is to try to be as imaginative as possible. I’m going to try to see the silhouette of that hot date of mine in my mashed potatoes. I’ll lie on the grass and look up at the world instead of down on it. I’ll burp at the dinner table and blame it on a mouse riding a motorized scooter.
I’ll even take the time to play with my niece. Perhaps she can teach me a thing or two about pretending. Last time I saw her, she did tell me she was a princess. And I can see that. Maybe this pretending thing isn’t as difficult as I thought.
And maybe this means there is still hope for make-believe in our overly serious society. After all, I can’t imagine a world without it.
