Flight of Fancy

“For The Pumpkin Princess”


Role Playing, there are any number of words and terms for it, just look in a thesaurus. A taradiddle, imagination, play-acting, pretense, make-believe, fantasy, daydream, castle in the sky, pipe dream, flight of fancy, sham, or even cloud-cuckoo-land; just to name a few.


Moreover, I have to admit that at one time I had no clue the expression even existed, or for that matter, that it was worthy of such handles. Which handles by the way, you can grab on to and have free reign, poetic license. The license used by a writer or artist to heighten the effect of their work. And according to our constitution, you are free to do or say whatever you want. In addition, should you go too far and offend someone, all you have to do is apologize by printing a retraction, buried so deep in the five hundred page Sunday edition of the New York Times, that no one will see it anyway.


Then why wouldn't the term carry a label? Everything else sports a tag of some sort. All the same, I digress and I am getting away from my flight of fancy. A memory I hope offends no one.
Ψ
On a crisp evening in the fall of nineteen eighty something, a night so well lighted by the radiance of the full moon that it caught the attention of my youngest daughter. Who so enraptured by yet another new discovery in her young life, found it necessary to have me join her on the front porch, and observe this wonder in tandem.


As she gazed skyward, I could tell that her attention was directed to a point in the heavens far beyond that radiant orb, known as the moon. The universe, another first discovery. I’m not sure which question came first. “What’s out there, or where does it end?” Followed by a torrent of questions, that made the water flowing over the Horseshoe of Niagara Falls seem small in comparison. However, it was her next statement, worded as much as a question that made me realize I had a thinker on my hands.


“Daddy, the sky is so bright, we should be able to see the flying saucers leaving the Moon tonight, shouldn’t we?


Well, talk about taking advantage of a situation. Then, on the other hand, she left herself wide open for what popped into my head. After all, she loved stories, weather read from a book, recited from memory, or conjured from the depths of my imagination. Now the opportunity presented itself for a story that would allow her to interact. (There we go, role-play.) What's more, is how she responded and beat me to the punch that took me by surprise?


I had discovered early on, Sharon’s off the cuff ability to improvise in a conversation. I only thought I would have a little fun and throw something out there, and find out how far she could run with it. I simply didn’t realize the depths to which her imagination reached, nor exactly how fast my little thinker could run. In addition, I certainly wasn’t ready when she took control of my little game of role-play, and ran so far out ahead of me that I was now playing a game of catch-up with a ten year old.




“Sharon, my love.” I would have said were I given the opportunity.
“I have to tell you something about the flying saucers, and I have to tell you now, because there isn’t much time left for me.”


That was my intended opening line. My intention was to tell her that my stay on this planet was fast drawing to an end; that the flying saucers would soon be coming to pick me up and take me back to my own planet. Then in anticipation of her next question, I would point skyward and say. “Somewhere out there Sharon, somewhere beyond the moon, somewhere past the second star to the right, and straight on till morning.” (I can still hear “Scotty” complaining even now. “But she’s gonna blow captain.”) However, that was not to happen. I lost control of the situation before I could get the first word out of my scheming oral cavity. Beaten at my own game by this mere child that somehow anticipated what I was going to say, and beat me to the punch.


“Daddy, I have something to tell you.” She started.
“Wait a just a minute; this was my part in the script, and it’s my script, not hers. Who gave her the lead role in this play?” I wondered.
With her mother, and my wife of sixteen years listening behind the screen door, and thinking we were both a couple of lunatics; (no pun intended) I was taken on a wondrous ride through the universe, past that second star to the right, and on till morning, finally landing on her home planet. Whose inhabitants as it turned out, looked exactly the same as we did. Which made me curious, and I posed the following question. “Why did you make the people on your planet, look the same as the people here on earth?”


“Well Dad, it just seems that if God created man, and Women, she added, in “her” own image, (woman’s lib, already at ten) and she created the heavens and the earth. Don’t you think she would make the people on other planets all look the same?”


Wow, here we go, my little thinker, and now she was going to throw the whole thing back in my lap. (She will grow to be a very clever woman I thought.) Creating another half hour debate, ending with my daughter making another new discovery. Daddy is not as smart as she thought, and doesn’t have all the answers. (Moreover, I do have to make an admission, at that time; I didn’t have all the answers.)


In addition to which the person listening behind the screen door, was by this time totally convinced that she should call someone in white coats. “Whatever gave her that idea?”


A story Rod Serling himself would have been intrigued with, and I am certain had he been the one standing behind the screen door would have found it worthy of at least two, half hour episodes of the Twilight Light Zone. What's more, all this from the mind of my ten-year-old daughter?


As we whiled away the evening without the aid of television, or other electrical devises, memories were created. Memories so precious, they cry out to be shared with whoever will listen. In drawing to a close, I hope this particular memory is as precious to my daughter Sharon, as it is to me.




“I’ll Always Love Ya Sharon!”
“Dad”


The best part of not being perfect is simply,
The joy that it brings to others.
J. Francis