More Late-Night Reflections

In the past couple of days, I have been doing a lot of reflection on many things, and one of those is beginning to talk somewhat honestly about memories and convictions, which is what the whole point of this blog is about.  This does not mean nothing previous has not been honest, but rather that I have not allowed myself the time and attention to speak with the candor in many cases I should speak with.  Fortunately, a book entitled Can't Make This Stuff Up, written by a Tennessee-born Southern humorist (and devout Christian) named Susannah Lewis came across my path, and it served to remind me of some things.  Therefore, I wanted to begin to share some insights of my own - some of the stuff I may say is familiar, but with a little more detail, and some of it will be completely new.  All I ask is that you bear with me as I share it, as I am flying by the seat of my pants at this point.

Tonight, I wanted to talk about some of my interests over the years, as at times especially when I was a kid I was into some things that still in some way impact me today, although I have outgrown a lot of it. One of those things was something my mother introduced me to when I was around five or six, and that was toy Noah's Ark sets.  Although at around that time Mom had just gone through an intense divorce from my dad, and we spent several years of my early childhood migrating between relatives, Mom still wanted me to have some faith foundation, and for that I suppose I owe her some credit, as I may not have found Christ later and been in faithful service to the Church had I not been exposed to some aspect of the Gospel at an early age.  The way Mom did this - and it was creative on her part admittedly - was by buying me Bible-themed toys.  Back in the day, small plastic Noah's Ark play sets were easy to find at almost any religious bookstore, and Mom got me my first when I was about 5 years old and we still lived in Baltimore with my Aunt Ruth in an ancient-looking old row house on Stafford Street.  Little did she (or I) know, but within a year or so I would take that to a whole other level, as that Noah's Ark set became one of my earliest hobbies.  At the age of six, we moved back to my hometown of Hendricks and in with my great-grandmother in the house that both Mom and I had practically grown up in, and it was there my new obsession with Noah's Ark took off.  I began to think I didn't have enough small plastic animals, and started to accumulate tons of them - at one point, they filled a large paper bag.  When I would get engrossed in this diversion, I would often play outside in the summer and would line those toy animals up in twos around the entire house leading to that Ark.  As I grew older, I began to lose interest and instead got into collecting trinkets out of those quarter prize machines when I was between the ages of 7 and 8 - I amassed quite a bunch of those too, and they included some things I thought were prizes at the time - tiny workable slot machines, miniature whistles, tiny working lighters, tiny cameras that took real pictures, and small Derringer toy pistols that shot caps.  I am not sure how much of that stuff I amassed, but everytime Mom gave me an allowance I was in those machines.  You see, when I get into a hobby, I go full OCD mode with it - I still actually do that today.  These interests led to others, notably the "cowboys and Indians" phase that happened at around the time I was eight or so.

For my eighth birthday in 1977, Mom bought me two things - one was a toy fort panorama with plastic cowboys and Indians, and the other was a WWII military panorama with submarines and toy soldiers.  I got it in my head then that I could play out a fantasy of building a miniature civilization out of these things, and a got a ton of that stuff too - it was reminiscent of the Noah's Ark toy phase a couple of years earlier.  I was actually into that well into the time I turned 10 years old, at which time one day my grandmother Elsie was cleaning and inadvertently mixed my cowboys and Indians in with other stuff, and for me that defiled the whole thing and I almost immediately lost interest.  It was toys like that though, and the obsessive collecting instinct I had with them, that led me to my music collection beginning with the age of 12, but this time it was different - I still collect records, and have now for 37 years.

As carried away and grandiose I got with these toy collections I had, there is one thing that toys like that did for me - they drove my imagination.   Many kids today don't understand that, as most are glued to laptops and cellphones playing stuff like "Angry Birds" or whatever and don't really get to exercise their imagination.  For a huge undertaking such as the Noah's Ark or cowboys and Indians phases I had, it took a day of strategizing and work to really set those up exactly as I wanted them, and by a day, it literally took that.   My mom was always happy about it, as it got me out of her hair for a long time and she could do whatever it was she did (which was usually lounging around drinking beer and listening to Jim Reeves records, as she had little ambition then to do much else).  Many of those same intricacies of planning are still evident in the way I do things today, as it sort of established a habit, which is in reality what play and imagination are meant to do anyway.  At times, I would actually sit and plan out what I was going to do, often while messing around out in the woods or fishing at my step-grandfather's pond, and being alone allowed me to talk to myself and get some clarity in all of that.  An active imagination in a child is a very precious commodity, and if you witness it, you should encourage it and allow them to just, well, be themselves.  My mother was not the perfect parent by any means, but on that one she did good.

As mentioned, I still plot and plan even today about things, although this day and age it is no longer about cowboys and Indians or a horde of plastic animals going into a tiny replica of Noah's Ark.  The planning skills I learned messing around with toy soldiers and cowboys are in essence the same skills and attributes that help me plan how to tackle some old bills, or even plan for dinner (as I love to cook, of course).  At times, I have even gotten so good at it that I actually plan on the fly and come up with good and brilliant ideas.  For example, one day I was watching a Gordon Ramsay documentary where he was visiting Singapore, and he sought out a classic Malay dish called a rendang.  In watching that, those gears and wheels inside my mind started turning, and I was thinking, "Wow, I can do something with this!"  So, in about ten minutes I had my own rendition of a traditional Malay rendang, and I was able to later try it and it turned out quite delicious (I think I may have the recipe on my food blog, but if not it will be soon).  Adults are allowed, despite the contrary notions in modern society, to have imagination - if ingenuity is the mother of invention, then imagination is its grandmother.  Many a fantasy has been turned into reality by a fertile mind imagining possibilities and then putting something together.  This is something we need to encourage our kids to do too.

I want to now end this rambling for tonight, but the point is that imagination is good, and it can even be transformational if it is allowed to be cultivated at an early age.  So long until next time.