Tag: imagination

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Space to Dream

In the midst of a cold and frozen week, a text from Heather sent me out of this world: “perseverance touched down on Mars ok.”

Over the next several minutes, I couldn’t have missed it if I wanted to. Images. News stories. Cartoons. And of course, posts up and down social media, all celebrating the same thing: The Perseverance rover had made a perfect landing on Mars and was already sharing its surroundings with one and all.

A big geeky smile spread across my face. For a moment, the impossibilities of the world didn’t seem to matter.

For just a moment, we were on higher ground.

My friends know that I’ve been a space geek for a long time. In grade school, I devoured books about the solar system and spacecraft, and then watched the moon eagerly with Dad through a Christmas-gift telescope. As I grew up, my heart was broken by Challenger, amazed by comet Hale-Bopp, and utterly overwhelmed by the images from Hubble. Even now, the Great Beyond has never lost its magic and wonder for me, from midday eclipses to fiery black holes.

And every now and then, I’m brought up short when someone says “So what?”

Mind you, it’s a seductive thing to say. After all, here we are, fenced in our homes, waiting for a vaccine to set us free – maybe. Here we are, in the depths of a bitter winter, watching much of Texas go dark in the world. It’s easy to be pulled “down to Earth,” easy to say “Don’t we have more important things to worry about?”

And yet.

For me, there’s always an “And yet.” It goes beyond the obvious, like the spin-off technologies from the space program that make life better on Earth. (Like say, those weather satellites that enable us to prepare for freezes like this.) It even goes beyond the notion that space and Earth are not an either-or, that attending to one does not automatically mean neglecting the other.

For me, it goes down to something deeper. More aspirational.

Moments like this prove that we’re capable of better.

They show that we can look beyond ourselves and our immediate needs to something grander.

They show that our perspective doesn’t have to be limited to our own doorstep.

They show that we can still ignite imagination, reach out with learning, and achieve wonders that once would have seemed impossible.

Most of all, moments like this show that we can hope. That we can dream. That we don’t have to be locked into a perpetual cycle of despair.

Looked at from that angle, the question isn’t “If we can land a vehicle on Mars, why can’t we keep Texas warm?” It instead becomes “If we can land a vehicle on Mars, what else could we possibly do?”

There are real and serious needs here on Earth. Despair won’t beat any of them. But if we face them with diligence, wonder, creativity and hope, we just may find a way forward.

We’re in a time now where even much of our science fiction – a language of dreams – is tied down in dystopic visions of grim survival. If we look out rather than burrow in, if we dare to give our dreams a chance, who knows what we might prove capable of?

Let’s set our hopes high. As high as the stars. And then labor to make them real.

After all, we’ve seen how that can put a world of possibilities in reach.

All it takes is a little Perseverance.

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Getting Your Duckies in a Row

The yarn almost clotheslined me as I entered the front room.

“What on Earth?…”

“Sorry!” Heather called out, laughing. “I forgot you’d be walking through here.”

Heather had been busy with our 9-year-old niece, the ever-inventive Riley. Together, the two of them had strung two sharply angled lines of yellow yarn from the bay window to the floor, securing them at each end with packing tape.

“It’s for Ducky,” Heather explained. Riley picked up her ever-present toy duck – the fuzz long since worn smooth by years of loving – clipped him to a coat hanger and hung it at the top of the yarn.

ZOOM! Riley laughed. Heather smiled. I stared agape. They’d built a zip line, sending him as smoothly to the ground as any Colorado rock climber could ask for.

As God is my witness, I didn’t know Duckies could fly.

I suppose by now I should be used to the ingenuity of our younger relations. But that’s the thing about imagination – it keeps creating its own wonder and appreciation. For a moment, you get a flash into someone else’s thinking and it expands your own.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never been that good with my hands, but I’m especially impressed by life’s builders. Particularly in a situation like this where you have limited materials, and manage to create something useful.

That’s not a bad example to have as we head into the primary season.

OK, don’t run and hide. I know that we’ve had election reminders, advertisements, and soapboxes on every side – on the screen, in the mail, on the doorstep, all over the media – and it’s only going to get more intense as we shift from the primaries to the general election. This isn’t a soapbox for one particular candidate … not at the rates they’re offering, anyway.
So why bring it up here? Because like invention, elections are an attempt to get from the ideal to the real with the materials you have.

And sometimes those materials are more limited than we’d like.

We’ve all seen it in so many elections. Nobody gets everything they want. We all have our ideal candidate with just the right resume who would touch all the right issues in just the right way to establish justice, prosperity, and half-price banana splits at Dairy Queen.

And then the actual candidates appear. And they’re … people. Ones with … well, maybe some of what we want. But we start wading through this one’s history, and that one’s attitude, and the one who trips on their tongue every three sentence. Sooner or later, someone says it: “Are these really the only choices we have?”

I am convinced that we could have the reincarnations of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Fred Rogers walk into the room and we’d still find ourselves asking that question.  Even at its best, politics invites criticism and challenge; at its most vicious, it can make a Broncos-Raiders game look like a tea party.

We’re not getting everything we want. Any of us.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t build something with what we have available.

And that’s what all this is about. Building something that makes this a better place for all of us.

Sure, you still have to use your judgment. Not all materials are equally useful and some may burn down the house entirely. But if we focus on what needs to be built – if we keep the hope that something CAN be built, and work toward it – even a limited tool box can make a difference.

It may not look like much. It may be totally improvised. But if we keep working at it, we just might surprise ourselves with the results.

And that would be just Ducky.

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Feeling the Force

One thing about visiting a galaxy far, far away. It makes bedtime far, far easier.

“Did you have a good time?”

A vigorous nod came in reply.

Missy’s smile was a mile wide as I pulled up the covers. No surprise. What she loves, she loves without reservation. And when it comes to Star Wars, the passion of our developmentally disabled ward  reaches a force (or even a Force) that would astound George Lucas himself. Just a glimpse of R2-D2, or the mighty Chewbacca, or (especially) Darth Vader is sure to mean a quick tug on my sleeve and a cry of “Da’y, look!”

And so, when the chance came to see it on the big screen, courtesy of a local theater, Heather and I had the same thought: “I have a good feeling about this.”

Needless to say, Missy was in heaven. She laughed, she cheered, she gave huge cries of “whoooooa!” at suitably big moments. Sitting still isn’t always easy for her, and her devotion didn’t entirely change that, but most of the motion was either bouncing with excitement, or turning around in her seat every so often to see if everyone else was having as much fun as she was.

She needn’t have worried. The audience was held in a grip Darth Vader would envy. For many, this was the first time in years they’d seen it in a theater … or even the first time they’d seen it in a theater at all.

The first time to really feel the magic. To live the story.

Some of you know what I mean. These days, we are surrounded by stories, and especially visual stories. It takes only a moment’s thought to binge an entire series on streaming television, to call up favorite clips on our smartphone, to download and immerse and enjoy.

It’s fun. It’s amazing. I don’t deny it.

But it’s also … well … small.

And you don’t realize how small until you step into something larger again.

Understand, I know the original Star Wars films cold. Saw them in the theater, played them endlessly on VHS, practically memorized the script. But when I walked back in with Missy that night, it was like I hadn’t seen them at all.

Suddenly, there were details that had vanished on a television screen or computer monitor. Suddenly, the music was swelling and the explosions were roaring.

But most of all – best of all – was that audience. Large. Absorbed. Laughing and applauding, unafraid to show how much they were enjoying this. I knew that power from live theater many times, but only rarely from modern movies, where multiple screenings often result in smaller, quieter crowds at each individual showing.

Here, the tale and the audience had become one.

And that, ultimately, is what any story is about.

Authors need readers. Actors need audiences. Tales need listeners – to bring their own lives to the story, their own thoughts and experience and wonder that fills in the blanks and makes it whole.

And when you have a lot of those lives in one place, where they can merge and transform and build, it creates a power that carries along everything in its wake. A hundred pieces, suddenly joined into a larger whole.

Inside the movie theater, that’s a powerful metamorphosis. Outside the movie theater, it can change the world.

I don’t mean the mindless conformity of an Imperial stormtrooper unit, though stories have been and will be twisted to do that, too. No, this is the power of the Rebels, bringing together aliens and droids, princesses and smugglers, ancient warriors and naive farm boys, into a cause that’s greater for having all of them. A story that’s richer than any one of them could have done alone.

That’s our story. Our epic.

And one heck of a smile at bedtime.

 

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A Failure of Imagination

Once in a while, Missy and I will decide it’s time to roll. Literally.

We don’t break out the wheelchair too often. But when we’re headed for somewhere where the distances are too great or the durations too long to be easily handled by Missy’s uncertain balance, we’ll load her up. Most of the time, it’s great fun for us, especially when I put on bursts of speed or sudden swerves to get her laughing and cheering.

And then, there are the other times.

Sometimes we find places where the sidewalk rises, just a bit. Not enough to be noticed by a pedestrian. But enough to temporarily turn a small wheelchair into a stuck grocery cart, until I lean and lift to pop it over the seam in the pavement.

Sometimes we find a place where the sidewalk runs high and the nearest slope to get on or off is far away.

Sometimes we find places where the sidewalk ends. Not the beginning of a Shel Silverstein land of whimsy and enchantment, but where the sudden appearance of dirt, grass, or broken landscape in mid-block says “Oh, you wanted the other side of the street.”

When it happens, Missy growls. And I fume or sigh and look around.

For a moment, we’re not just anybody else. We’re living in someone else’s world. A someone who didn’t see us coming.

***

Of course, you don’t have to be disabled to have a walk made challenging. Sometimes you just have to be the wrong kind of astronaut.

Most of the country heard about a planned spacewalk a few days ago. It was supposed to be historic, the first NASA walk into the Great Beyond made by two female astronauts.

One of the women had to stay aboard the station instead. Why? Because there was only one medium-sized spacesuit ready for use. And both of them needed it.

Yes, getting to orbit was actually easier than getting out the door.

Funny. For a moment, I thought I heard a Missy growl.

***

In many ways, we’re an amazingly imaginative species. We’ve sent people to the moon, sent data around the world in an instant, brought superheroes and fantastic adventurers to life on the movie screen (even if we can’t always give them decent dialogue). From biology to fashion, we constantly push back the borders on every side.

But in other ways, we can be just as amazingly limited.

Ask a left-hander who’s ever had to use an old-style school desk or a random pair of scissors.

Ask someone who’s 6’4” walking through a building made when the average male height was 5’6”.

Ask the 9-year-old girl last year who found that the basketball shoes she was excited about had labeled all the smaller sizes as “boys.”

I’m sure many of us could add to the list of examples, from the seemingly trivial to the potentially life-threatening. Usually not from active malice, but because “we never thought of that.”

It’s so easy to do. We get used to a type, so much so that we stop seeing it.

And then the assumption gets challenged. And everyone gets to do a double take.

It affects the things we make and the stories we tell (and who gets to be the hero in them). It  affects how we interact with the world, and with each other. It affects whether we even see that there’s an “other” at all.

It’s where imagination meets empathy. And in that place, we not only remember that other people matter, but try to envision what “mattering” means. Beyond our own race, gender, level of ability, or anything else.

We’ll screw up. It’s inevitable. We’re human. But if we’re making the effort to see, to learn, to understand, to put ourselves in the place of another – just maybe our vision wont be so nearsighted, so often.

The more we can do that, the more easily we can all roll along.

Right, Missy?

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Hold the Phone

The Digital Age has its new poster child.

On Wednesday, when most of us were learning firsthand about bomb cyclones, an Australian man got out of his car to find a visitor waiting outside his home – with a bow and arrow at the ready. So the man followed normal 21st century safety procedure.

Namely, he pulled out his phone and started taking pictures.

The archer fired. The arrow was on target. And according to Reuters, the homeowner walked away with barely a scratch.  Why? Because the arrow hit and killed the phone instead.

OK, show of hands. How many of us have wanted to do that to a smartphone, just once?

Thought so.

Our world of tiny phones and big social networks has come up for a lot of mockery over the years, sometimes justifiably so. People have walked into manholes while texting (and then, predictably, tried to sue). Fatal car accidents have resulted from drivers with one hand on the wheel and both eyes on a phone. In our time, we’ve been just an arm’s length away from the manipulations of political saboteurs, the boasts of killers, and even the rise of Justin Bieber.

So is it any wonder that when Facebook and Instagram went kersplat for many people on Wednesday, the mass frustration was mixed with a little joking relief?

“Son, I wasn’t alive for the Donner Party or Pearl Harbor, but I am old enough to remember when both Facebook and Instagram were down at the same time during that terrible winter of ’19,” comedian John Fugelsang joked.

The memes! Will no one think of the memes?

More seriously, though – it’s human nature to be frustrated with the tools we depend on. It was true of the first computer. It was true of the automobile. It was probably true of the first ancient human to deliberately set a branch on fire, and then later discover his teenage son had burned up Dad’s favorite spear. “What do you mean, you wanted to see what would happen?”

But for every frustration, our tools also open a door. Sometimes some pretty amazing ones.

My wife Heather is often stuck at home because of chronic illness. Her phone opens the world to her, allowing her the experience and interaction that her body might otherwise bar.

An acquaintance of mine has a love of reading and a tiny apartment. His devices give him access to a library that would overwhelm a four-bedroom house.

I have dear friends halfway across the country whom I’ve never met, yet “visit” regularly. We’ve shared joys, sorrows, and horrible jokes as easily as any next-door neighbor.

I’m sure most of you could add more. The weather report in a pocket. The research library that’s open at 2 a.m. before a term paper is due.  The chance to quickly learn a home repair, or some language basics, or just figure out the lyric you could never understand on the radio. On and on and on.

Sure, our tech can frustrate. It can be used badly, even horribly. But it doesn’t have to dehumanize. Used well, it can bring us together and open up possibilities that put a science fiction writer to shame.

It’s up to us. It always has been. And that is both a frightening and a wonderful possibility.

The future’s in our hands. What will we make of it?

Hopefully, something a little better than target practice.

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Touching Opportunity

This week, a lot of people have taken a chance – an Opportunity, if you will – to look to the heavens and thank the little robot that could.

The story’s well-known by now. How the planned mission of the Mars rover Opportunity was for 90 days. How, like other rovers before it, it kept going long past its expiration date – by more than 14 years, in fact.

And now, like other rovers before it, it’s gone silent. Nothing had been heard from it since last June, when a Martian dust storm covered its solar cells. After hoping that another wind would clear the rover and allow it to recharge, NASA finally declared Opportunity “dead.”

“The last message they received was basically ‘My battery is low and it’s getting dark,’” science writer Jacob Margolis tweeted. The words were Margolis’s poetic interpretation of the June signal, not a literal sentence from Opportunity. But the “last words” added an extra touch of heartbreak to the moment, turning it from the shutdown of a machine to the silencing of a beloved explorer.

Does that sound silly? I don’t see why.

Caring for things is what we do. Even when they can’t care back.

We read books or watch movies and anguish over the fate of people who never existed, except in our minds.

We name cars and say goodbye to childhood homes, so interwoven with our lives that we can’t imagine their absence.

We become part of a story. We invest a little, or a lot, of ourselves in it. And when a good story ends, it touches us. It leaves us a little different for the experience.

But with a good story, there’s always one chapter left, even after the volume is closed. The one that we write.

Having taken this story into our hearts, what do we do with it?

That, too, may sound a little odd. Most of us, after the age of six, don’t try to don a cape and cowl and fight evil on the streets after watching a superhero movie. One does not simply walk into Mordor after reading or viewing The Lord of the Rings, or search crowds for Rhett Butler after completing Gone With The Wind, or build up a high-tech loadout after reading Tom Clancy. (OK, there may be some exceptions on that last one.)

But we do take Lessons. Inspiration. Examples. Even hope. The stories we invest in, the people and experiences we treasure, all teach us something. And maybe even inspire us to a next step.

It might be the simple reassurance that, even if they can’t fly or shoot energy beams, heroes may already be among us, looking just like you and me – could maybe even be you and me.

It may be the reminder that fighting evil is a hard and grueling task, but that even small actions can add up to huge differences, even without the aid of a magic ring or an Elvish sword.

It can even be the lesson, taught by a machine of our own making, that we can be capable of so much more than we believe. That we can keep going beyond everyone’s expectations, even our own.

Maybe even far enough to one day thank Opportunity in person.

The skies don’t have to be the limit. The story can go where we choose to take it, both inside us and beyond us. That’s inspiring to me as a writer, as a space geek, and even as a human being.

Care. Follow where it takes you. Write the next story.

After all, Opportunity is where we choose to find it.

 

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What a Great Idea! Right?

Anyone can sing in the car on long trips. The Dutch took it one step further.

According to Reuters, the highway near the Dutch city of Jelsum will play a song when you drive over the rumble strips. Not just any song, either. When you hit the strips at 40 mph, the road will ring out with the anthem of Friesland, a northern region of the Netherlands. Imagine if a stretch of US-287 suddenly started playing “Rocky Mountain High” and you’ll have the idea.

It was brilliant. And also insane. Because what sounds cool when one car drives over one stretch of road every now and then, becomes chaos when a regular stream of traffic travels the same road at all hours and at varying speeds.

“Locals say the musical road had created a never-ending cacophony that keeps them awake at night,” Reuters reported, briefly quoting one neighbor who got to continually listen to the anthem at high speed in the early hours one night when a long string of taxis chose to blaze across the rumble strips.

The strips will soon be removed. And the Dutch get to join a long line of people in singing one of humanity’s oldest anthems: “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”

You know this song. So do I. It’s not the song of the moments that are inattentive and clueless, like the time I walked off the stage and into the orchestra pit on Opening Night in mid-song (a matter now part of Longmont Theatre Company legend). No, these are the ones with a little thought and a lot of optimism, deliberate choices that felt really good until the consequences started to kick in.

For me, it was the night I tried driving home from Garden City, Kans. on a single tank of gas, figuring I could refuel in Bennett instead of my usual Kansas stop in Goodland. Great idea – except it was late in the day on a holiday weekend when I arrived and the gas station was closed. The result was increasingly urgent prayer as I ultimately arrived in Hudson – and an open Conoco station – on fumes.

For our disabled ward Missy, it might be the decision that her Big Purse always has room for one more item. Great idea – until it suddenly contains half the known universe. The result is a purse that she’s reluctant to leave behind but often asks someone else to carry on trips.

For my wife Heather – well, she married me, didn’t she? (Just kidding … I think.)

At its best, it’s born of an admirable capacity – the human ability to imagine something worthwhile and then put out the effort to make it happen. The trouble comes when hope and sweat are divorced from judgment and reflection. That’s when the weird things happen.

When we’re lucky, the worst it produces is embarrassment, expense, and an unforgettable story.

When we’re not so lucky, the results can be tragic. On a national scale, it can even mean lives disrupted or lost, regions devastated, and seemingly-endless wars begun – though in that last case, the anthem’s title is usually rephrased to “What Else Could I Do?”

A great question. But one that’s usually never asked until after it’s already too late.

I believe in hope and imagination. I believe in making the best decision you can from the information you have, rather than being paralyzed because you can’t make the perfect choice. But I also believe that’s a different thing from not considering consequences at all, just because what you want to do seems so compelling or necessary.

Consequences have to be considered. And if they’re not faced before the choice is made, they certainly will be after.

At that point, it’s best to learn from the Dutch. Acknowledge what happened. Fix it as soon as possible. Learn from it. And move on down the road.

Because sometimes you just have to change your tune.

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The Oddest Corners

The record of human brilliance stretches across centuries, with numerous landmarks to light its way. The invention of the wheel. The discovery of the smallpox vaccine. Ideas that helped us unlock the structure of genetics, the movements of the heavens, and the creation of computer games that keep you up until 3 in the morning. (Ahem.)

And then – there are the other achievements.

Like the brassiere that converts into a pair of protective face masks.

Or the use of live crocodiles to encourage or discourage gamblers.

Or the recipe to partially un-boil an egg.

For this sort of thing, you want the Ig Nobel Prizes, given out since 1991 for unlikely discoveries that “make people laugh and then make them think,” according to the organizers. Some of the awards have been tongue-in-cheek, such as the ones given to Dan Quayle for demonstrating the need for better science education, or to Volkswagen for their, uh, creative approach to the problem of reducing vehicle emissions. But most reflect actual study or achievement, even if the project is a bit … unlikely? Bizarre? Even silly?

I love this kind of stuff.

Mind you, I have nothing against awards for excellence – I’ve won a few and written about many more. But as anyone who’s watched a four-hour Oscar ceremony knows, the concept can get a little over-the-top. (Especially in years when you go on for four hours and then give out the wrong Oscar, but, hey, I’m sure that’ll only be remembered for two or three centuries.)

So we get things like the Razzies, honoring the worst movies ever made. Or the Darwins, recognizing those who improved the gene pool by leaving it. Distinctions that present a cautionary tale and a reason to laugh at ourselves.

By itself, that might be enough justification for the Ig Nobels. Heaven knows we need all the laughter we can get in today’s world. But I especially like the Igs (can I call them Igs? Thank you.) because of a larger concept they illustrate – that ANYTHING can be thought about in a scientific way.

Science encourages questions, even about the seemingly obvious. In that, it has a lot in common with my old field of journalism, where one of the fundamental maxims is “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Ask, explore, discover, and ask again.

But as a species, we are horrible at questioning ourselves. Five minutes on any social media platform will show how quickly we grow defensive and how rarely we listen. Even in the offline world, conversations often become less about exchanging ideas and experiences, and more about waiting for an opening to grab the microphone. Our assumptions become positions to defend and hills to die on, rather than invitations to actually learn.

And so, I treasure anything that encourages asking questions. Even silly ones. After all, if we get practice in asking the odd questions, how much more likely do the reasonable ones become?

And sometimes, even the odd questions yield something useful. It turns out that playing a digeridoo actually can help sleep apnea a little bit (breathing exercises are breathing exercises), that roller coasters may help some symptoms of asthma, and that looking at pretty pictures might affect how much pain you feel while being shot in the hand with a laser.

OK, so that last one may not be all that useful except to Luke Skywalker. But give it time.  And in that time, keep asking more questions.

It’s a noble pursuit. Or even an Ig Nobel one.

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Fantastic Tales

Beware the dragons. Watch out for the trolls. And always remember that heroes may be hazardous to your health.

Not your usual prescription, I grant you. But it’s apparently second nature to Graeme Whiting, an English headmaster who made international headlines when he declared that fantasy fiction would rot your child’s mind.

No, I’m not overstating it. Kind of hard to, really.

“Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and Terry Pratchett, to mention only a few of the modern world’s ‘must-haves’, contain deeply insensitive and addictive material which I am certain encourages difficult behaviour in children,” Whiting wrote as part of a lengthy blog post on his school’s website, “yet they can be bought without a special licence, and can damage the sensitive subconscious brains of young children, many of whom may be added to the current statistics of mentally ill young children.”

You might be surprised to learn that he and I agree on exactly one thing: Parents should pay attention to what their children read. Books do indeed open doors onto many places, and every parent should know where their child is spending their time, whether it’s in the park or in the Shire.

But fantasy can open some wonderful doors indeed.

I’m not writing to disparage the more classic works that Mr. Whiting himself loves and encourages for a growing mind, such as Shakespeare or Dickens, which were also part of my reading. Enough so that I’m a bit amused. After all, Dickens was long considered popular trash by lovers of “proper literature” and as for Master Shakespeare – well, whose life couldn’t use a dose of teen marriage and suicide (Romeo and Juliet), eye-gouging (King Lear), witchcraft (Macbeth), and rape and mutilation (Titus Andronicus), with just a sprinkling of cross-dressing and humiliation of authority (Twelfth Night)?

Sure, they’re wonderful – dare I say magical? – stories. But safe? C.S. Lewis once warned visitors to Narnia that the great Aslan was “not a tame lion” and if a story has any power to it at all, it can never be considered a “safe story.” When books meet brains, anything can happen. Anything at all.

Stories have a power that the great authors of fantasy knew quite well.

“Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures?” the hobbit Bilbo Baggins declares in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Tolkien has been my own Gandalf since about third grade, leading my imagination into places both terrifying and wonderful – as have many of the fantasy authors who followed in his wake. My family and I have cheered on Harry Potter, wandered with Taran and Eilonwy, leaped through wrinkles in time, and stumbled through wardrobes into unexpected worlds.

You acquire many things on a quest like that. Beautiful language. Heartbreak and hope. A decidedly quirky strain of humor. And most of all, the realization that evils can not only be survived, they can be overcome.

“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey,” G.K. Chesterton famously wrote in 1909. “What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”

No, stories aren’t safe. Few things worth having are. But they can be priceless.

So yes, have a hand in your child’s reading. Be careful. Be aware. But be open to wonder as well. And don’t fear the dragons.

After all, that is where the treasure is to be found.

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Walking on Dreams

“Look a’ that!”

When I hear those words and that tone, I know what I’m likely to find. I glance to where Missy’s finger is stabbing the magazine page and I’m not disappointed.

“Whoa,” I say appreciatively. “Cool shoes, Miss!”

Anyone who knows our disabled ward knows she has an eye for footwear, the brighter the better. Her sneakers are usually a shade of hot pink most often seen on Barbie dolls, cotton candy and pre-teen birthday cakes with extra frosting. Her current pair literally glow in the dark, not that they need to – even in broad daylight, every eye in the room is pulled to them like Superman to a bank robbery.

“I want a pair like those!” is the common refrain, with a smile and a laugh. My wife Heather even went beyond words to action; she and Missy now have matching Day-Glo footwear. Strategically placed, they may even save us money on nightlights, so there are all kinds of side benefits to be had.

But Missy’s dreams race far ahead of her feet.

Go through a magazine with her, even for a short while, and you will discover every wild, elaborate or fancy pair of shoes to be had. High heels with elaborate fastenings. Pumps with sequins. Shoes straight off the runway, with no practical application at all – ah, but this isn’t about practicality, is it? This is about imagination.

“Look a’ ma shoes.”

Missy’s cerebral palsy rules out nearly every single pair, of course. Her balance is carefully maintained at each step, even in sneakers with good soles and great support; put her in even a low heel and the fun would quickly become dangerous. Were she ever to spend more time in a wheelchair, Heather and I agree, one of the few consolations would be the amount of footwear that would be opened up to her.

And so, she dreams. It’s fun, even harmless, so long as she doesn’t actually step into anything that can’t hold her up.

At this point in the election calendar, Missy may have a lot of company.

Anyone who’s been giving even a glance to the political news – and I can’t really blame you if that isn’t you – has been seeing constant reports of “surges,” presidential candidates catching fire who are sure to be the Next Big Thing. The spotlight may be on Ben Carson, or Bernie Sanders, or the Trump card himself, but the message is always the same: look over here, a star is about to be born!

“Look at that!”

It can be fun to see the enthusiasm (or maybe frightening, depending on the candidate and your side of the aisle) and speculate on the possibilities. But like the shoes in Missy’s catalogs, there’s not a lot of support there.

This is the preseason. Maybe even training camp.

This is the stretch of time that once spurred talk about Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain. This is when Howard Dean was a superstar and Bill Bradley a hopeful.

This is six months before the primaries get started. A lot can happen in six months. And usually does.

In short, it’s dream season.

And it’s worth remembering.

By all means, get fired up for someone. It’s good to care, great to be involved. But this early in the game, take each report of a surge with a few shakers of salt. Meteoric rises are common at this stage. So are equally-meteoric falls.

Maybe your guy or gal really is The One. If that’s your leaning, great. Work to make it so. But don’t be seduced into thinking it’s all over but the laurel wreaths. As the SEALs like to say, the only easy day was yesterday. The long work is still ahead.

Dreams are fun, even necessary. But the support has to be there.

If it comes in glow-in-the-dark pink, that’s a bonus.