Daydream Believer

As an adult do you daydream much anymore?

Don't you miss it?

I'm not quite sure when we really stop daydreaming. Perhaps when we finally figure out that it's really all a big pile of shit, but I used to be a pretty good daydreamer.

I bring all of this up because Sam, at least, seems to have a pretty healthy imagination. I just know that he puts himself in scenarios where he hits the big shot, drives in the winning run, or is roundly applauded.

Jake, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be in the pretend world as much unless you count the war he's fighting in Call of Duty...which is a whole 'nother story.

"I've been playing that game non-stop," he told me yesterday. "Thank God there's school or I'd have lost my mind from playing."

Yeah...Thank God there's school.

But as an adult the 'I'm gonna' be a hero' dream sort of fades.

There won't be any big, last second shots.

I can't get the ball to the hoop without emitting a loud groan and hearing the crackle of my bones. What pretty girl in the front row is gonna' be impressed by the sounds of my painful groans?

There won't be a king on a white horse rescue where the undying love is pledged for all eternity.

First off, how do you get on the horse? Secondly, is the emotional rescue really worth the effort? You want out?

Go.

Make me a sandwich before you go.

The burning building saving lives scenario?

I recall writing about this way back. My character in a vastly under-rated book - In Real Life - was a daydreamer. He was also in love with a woman who loved his best friend. He pictured rescuing her from a burning building and then having her fall hopelessly in love with him.

I suppose that I would enter a burning building for the ones that I love, but to win a new love?

Nah.

Too old for that crap.

Besides, fire is hot.

The NBA is Calling.

Sam spent the first ten years of his life telling us that he'd be drafted by the Chicago Bulls straight out of middle school.

He's now in middle school.

"I'm gonna' finish high school before I declare myself eligible," he said the other day.

Oh, Thank God.

I do want him to get some education.

"I hit a bomb in practice today," he told me when he came through the front door.

I could almost hear the cheers that were exploding in his ears.

I wanted to tell him to keep all of those best daydreams alive because sooner or later real life strips the most imaginative of them away.

And you're left spending the day dreaming of the moment when you can just lie down for crying out loud!