Imagination and Audacity

Time travel is one of the most illusive dreams of the human species. Everyone at least once in their life dreams about being able to go back or forward in their lives. 

Well other than in movies, TV and other vehicles of the imagination that isn't possible. You can't go into the past but sometimes the past can come to you. 

This week a couple of things have come together that have given me my own little episode of time travel. 

The first is a person. He's a 5 year old kindergarten boy who comes to the after school program where I work. Whenever the group goes outside to play "Billy" (not his real name) usually comes over to me and asks me if I want to play "super heroes" with him. He's such a charming little guy that I just can't refuse. 

This kid has an energy and an imagination that is seemingly limitless. The superhero he "turned" himself into during the first couple of weeks we played together was "The Flash." 

While I sit on the picnic table bench, he runs himself all over the basketball court making a "whooshing" sound and pretending to be moving at super human speed. 

Not only that but he made me a super hero too. After my insistence, he turned me into "Rewind Guy." Someone who, with the flick of his left forearm can turn back time. But at his discrection he can block my powers with a different kind of "whoosh" while punching the air with his fists in my direction.

This boy's imagination at one time or another over the last couple of weeks has made the picnic benches both our super hero cars and the headquarters where all the superheroes go for their "official" assembly meeting. While there they stay in their own private rooms. 

(By the way you can order room service there. Their specialty is pizza with chicken that tastes like sausage.)

He even made up a little super hero romance. Whispering to me that he is loves the girl with "big white feathers" named "Hawk Girl" because she "wears the prettiest dresses to the meetings."

Then yesterday he advises me that he's no longer The Flash but is now "Fast Shock" a totally new super hero that's even faster than the guy with the lightening bolt on his red suit. I don't know if it is but I believe this is an original creation. 

Those are just a few examples of the stories and situations this 5 year old entertains me with each day. He has an seemingly limitless imagination. He looses himself in play and totally commits himself to a "role."

He chooses the currently very popular universe of super heroes. Something he probably sees a lot on TV or on video.  

I have to say that he really reminds me  a lot of myself at that age. I used imagine myself as other characters in amazing adventures too. 

My choices of characters and worlds to identify with and mentally transfer myself into were different. I put myself into the worlds of the TV shows I watched as a kid. I impersonated the afternoon kids show hosts and the characters they performed or the puppets they interacted with. I also committed to my performances.

I mean at his age I had one of my neighbors convinced that my name was "Will Robinson." I was pretending to be the character played by Billy Mummy in the si-fi TV show, "Lost In Space."

So my friend, Billy sends me back in time to the carefree days of my childhood when all I had to do was imagine what adventures I could go on. 

The other factor that brings time travel to my door is the recording project I wrote about a month ago. It wasn't until this week that I actually sat down and started transferring the albums I wrote about in my March 16 post. 

I'm using the computer program Audacity to make the recordings. Making digital copies of the songs and stories I listened to almost 50 years ago really does take me back. 

I just completed copying the original 1961 album of "The Alvin Show." It was the first record I ever remember owning. I also digitalized (is that a word?) the record that came with the General Electric Show N Tell entertainment system I got for my 5th birthday. 

One of the sides of the record has a song that I could still sing word for word even before I found a copy of it. 

I have others to record that take me back to other times in my life but those are the two things that take me back in time the farthest. 

So this week I am experiencing my own personal bit of time travel. Of course I have a tendency to make everyday "throw back Thursday." I just love to reminisce about the times of my life (at least the good ones) the way I remember them.

But sometimes the experience becomes more than just remembering it's on a different level. It's almost tactile. 

That's kind of what I've been going through this week. It's kind of like I've been going through my own scene like the one in "The Lion King". The one where Mufasa appears to his son in the night sky and says Simba, you have forgotten who you are." 

Perhaps "going back in time" in such a palpable way is reminding me of the qualities I once used without reservation. And also a realization that those qualities are still there ready to be used again. 

And I owe it all to a 5 year old boy's imagination and the computer program Audacity. 

Billy doesn't care who is around or who is or isn't buying into the adventures of his imagination. When he's running around the playground "at the speed of light." believing in the experience heart and soul. 

Maybe that's the another (and more positive) lesson I am supposed to be learning this week. 

Hmmm....will have to think about that and use it to get back to my future.