Theories from my childhood on cultivating imagination ~

So here is what triggered this post - I was looking for a tool in my basement when I came upon one of those cake pans that is used to make an angel food cake. It comes apart in two pieces, I’m guessing to make it easier to remove the cake. Now, I don’t remember my mom making a lot of cakes, but for years now I’ve listened to the story about how I got one of those cake pans stuck on my head.

Apparently, rather than playing with the standard bubble popper or baby dolls, I liked to play with the pots and pans and would often put them on my head like a hat. Maybe I was wearing that hat a little bit to one side or maybe my head just got bigger, but one day it slipped down over my head and got stuck around my neck. My older sister found it hysterical and couldn’t stop laughing, and my mom was horrified and couldn’t stop crying. After much pushing on my nose and the bone on the back of my head, along with applying some sort of lubricant found in the kitchen (corn oil or margarine?), my mom put me in the car and took me to the emergency room, where the pan was successfully removed.

I also had a huge marble collection, with the big marbles being the parents and the smaller ones being the kids. I liked to give them a good bath every day by putting them in my mouth and swishing them around, which definitely lead to swallowing a lot of marbles. I only told my mom about the ones that felt like they were stuck in my throat. But she still let me play with them?!?

I have a good friend who tells me about her creative antics as a little girl. One day she decided to take all the labels off the cans in the cupboard, create her own labels and place them randomly on all of the cans - A disaster during the heyday of canned food.

~

Most parents hope to cultivate imagination in their children, but they need to also keep in mind that the imagination cannot be neatly controlled. There may be days when they find their basement sink full of mud because treasure maps are being made. They may have to drink mint tea that they know their kids made by squeezing the mint in their hands into a bucket of water. They may have to sit through theatrical performances that have no beginning, no middle and no end.