Last week, we asked kids to take a peek into the back of their brains and see what sorts of imaginary things lurked there. Whether creatures or places or mythical happenings. Here’s what they came up with.
Joe was a man of few words this week (unless you count the 1,000 that his picture provides). He drew “a 3-headed snake,” then added for sake of emphasis that it is “(poisonous!).”
What self-respecting three-headed snake wouldn’t come packing deadly venom, I say? The thought of running into Joe’s three-headed friend has me worried, in spite of the fact that he’s imaginary. That’s the thing about imagination, it’s awfully powerful sometimes. And when your imagination talks to my imagination, they can have quite a conversation. I’m glad I’m not walking in the woods right now. My imagination says that Joe’s snake only lives on other planets. I hope that’s right, because I start to imagine it living here, I might not be able to imagine going outside ever again.
As for Tyler, here is his drawing of imaginary planets.
Tyler offers a detailed guide to understanding his solar system:
One of the imaginary planets [upper right] is called “Hustle 5.” It has a lot of smoke coming from it and people live on it. And there are lots of houses. And nobody is poor on that planet.
The imaginary planet in the middle is called “Rainbow Mixed with White.” In that planet, there are 1 billion bad guys and two billions good guys, and one police man, and 5 houses.
The next planet is called “Sharp Force” [bottom right]. That one can kill planets because it has sharp stuff on it and it can move everywhere. There are six billion people inside and the six billion people are bad guys.
The “Mixed Dripping Planet” [bottom left] has sixteen billion good guys inside. This planet can move all around and drip poison on other planets. There are also five baseball fields on the planet. The champion team is called the “Giants.”
“Double 16 Planets” [upper left] is a really big planet that’s a structure that spins really, really fast. There are 1600 billion good and bad guys on the planet. And also there are planets connected to it. That’s why it has two circle shapes on it.
That’s it.
All I can say is, Tyler has an imagination that stretches from here to the far end of the solar system and back again. This is wonderful stuff. I wish that my brain were capable of this kind of creativity.
And is anyone else as worried as I am about the prospects of long-term happiness for the good guys on the rainbow planet? That one police officer must be the most overworked civic employee in the history of the universe. Perhaps vigilante justice comes into play from time to time?
Moving on to Kato’s drawing:
According to Kato:
“This is a ghost. He has 14 feet. He’s friendly and nice. I can see him. There’s lots of big teeth. I’m not scared of them because I’m big. I’m a grown-up.”
I like how Kato’s image/story pair doubles as a coming-of-age story, a declaration of self-arrival. Let’s hope that Kato’s apparent graduation to the ranks of the big and grown-up signals an accompanying interest in using the toilet.
And here’s what Alden drew:
If you’re wondering what’s going on, here is Alden’s take;
“The ghost has long hair. It goes straight down. And this is going to be the meanest unicorn (on the right). It’s going to have a really mean face. The meanest one. It’s climbing up a tree [as an explanation of why it had two arms on one side and two arms on the other and no feet touching the ground]. This is a monster [the one in the middle]. These are his sharp teeth and these are his toe claws. And this is his mean face. He has claws on his eyes. He has pokes on his head. They’re all really mean to each other. And they’re all naked. The unicorn has the biggest belly button. The ghost tries to be friendly, but they both are mean to him but then they’re nice. The end. They live in a garden full of seeds.”
Several questions spring to mind, but I’ll start with the most troubling. When is the end not really the end? Do we take Alden’s last-second offering of the detail about the seeds as the sign of a forgetful narrator, or are those seeds, in fact, the beginning of a new tale? This is a very postmodern approach. Very troubling.
Further, the idea of a monster with “claws on his eyes” is even more upsetting. But not as upsetting as the “pokes on his head.” These are the end times, my friends.
Finally, “The unicorn has the biggest belly button,” has become my new favorite sentence. At least for today. I’ll probably have another one tomorrow.
In closing, I leave you with Spencer, who offered the following:
And this explanation:
“My drawing is a picture of a king, queen and princess taking a walk. They like exploring nature. They are actually real people in my mind, not imaginary.”
Spencer’s commentary raises an interesting dilemma. What is real and what is imaginary? If you can see it in your head, who’s to say that it’s not really there. And just because I think I’m here, who’s to say I’m not a brain suspended in a vat of gelatinous goo, merely thinking that I’m walking, talking, singing, dancing, and writing a blog post at this moment.
Spencer is going to have a good time in philosophy 101 some day.
His mom passed on this commentary on Bill the dragon’s dilema (as reported in the post that led to these drawings). “That’s so easy. How could someone talk to him if he’s imaginary? That’s weird.”
Oh Spencer, may you be forever exempt from the searing insecurity of adolescence and the power of suggestion levied by one’s cooler, faster, stronger, meaner peers. Downright imaginary claims emerge in compelling technicolor. Frequently during my seventh grade year, I was led to believe that I was short, fat, unlovable, and had a bad haircut.
Or was that reality? I can’t now tell the difference.