I can pretend

In one single day or even in an hour, I can pretend to be as many me’s
as I want to be. I can pretend to be a movie star, an artist, a teacher,
a doctor, an inventor. I can pretend that I am anywhere at any time
doing anything I want to do. I can go back to long ago. I can go ahead
into a time that has yet to come. I can “see” all this in the world
inside my mind.

When I tell my mother about my different me’s and the things they do and
the places they go, she smiles and says, “You have imagination.” That’s
what she calls pretending.

Now I work with maps that other people have made. But I dream of the day
when I will help to make a map.

She says that children aren’t the only ones who pretend. Grown-ups do
it, too. Someone must “see” a thing in a pretend world before it can be
made into a part of the real world. How else could there be new things
that never were before?

Without imagination there would be no rocket ships, airplanes,
telephones, television, or the many other things I see in my world. No
one could make up a poem or a story. No one could make beautiful
paintings or statues.

I learn when inventors, artists, writers, and others share with me the
worlds they “see” inside their minds. I want to share my pretend world,
too.