THE JOY AND PAIN OF PRETENDING

I have always imagined things differently than they actually are, which, in part, is responsible for the name of my blog, nonordinarytime [also titled: nonordinaryreality in a former setting]. I’ve been that way for as long as I can remember. I suppose on some level we call it fantasy. Maybe I’m missing a reality gene that other people seem to have—sensible people and not-so-sensible people. It poses the ongoing question for me: what is real after all?

          When I was a kid, I did a lot of pretending. Make believe came naturally to me. As a small child of 4 or 5 or 6, I had imaginary friends—or were they real? For instance, there was my Native American friend, Magua—which I found out later (in college, in fact) was the name of a Native American in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. There was no way for me to know that at that early childhood stage of my life.  

          There were others, good guys and bad guys—but mostly good guys because I have never liked the dark side of people or things (which is an irony considering the days we’re living in now, politically and culturally). To this day, I’d rather not watch movies or TV shows that are too heavy with dark themes unless there is a guarantee of a happy ending of some kind. That’s me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.  

          I had real friends too, and they were always great fun to be with. But when they weren’t around or before I knew them, I made friends up and I made life up. Maybe it was a Disney influence on me. I don’t know. Something.

          When I was in the 4^th grade, my parents bought me a set of World Book Encyclopedias. I loved them from the very beginning when my father and I picked them up at the train station, took them home, opened the boxes, and the aroma of fresh new books came wafting into the air of the living room. I remember them so well, and I had that same set until we moved out of the parsonage in Cranbury in 2009, and we were, by necessity, downsizing.  I remember their red covers, the color plates of birds and flowers and fish and well-known paintings, the pictures of famous and infamous people of history, and the general themes of almost anything in the whole wide world. I’m not sure just how accurate they were with their information, but I took them to be true and that’s all I needed to know.

          In these days, I’m inclined to want to pretend about so many things: pretend that I’m younger, pretend that the world is a completely friendly place, pretend that there is no such thing as a pandemic or cancer or any other kind of illness, pretend that money is no object for anyone for buying food, clothing, and shelter, pretend that our government has kindness and goodwill and the interest of all people as its main objective, and the list goes on.

          Of course that would also be even better as a reality rather than a fantasy.