Daydreamer - Essay Example

? [Teacher and number] 25 March Daydreamer I am no longer the same kind of person I that used to be. I don’t know if that’s good or not. When I was younger, I used to have a wild imagination. Now I look at things logically and skeptically. I used to daydream whenever I could manage to get a few minutes to think to myself. I would create the most fascinating worlds in my imagination. I used to believe in a lot of silly things, too. As I grew up and became more logical, I stopped believing in a lot of the things I once thought were real. I was happy about that, because I felt smarter, like I was a more rational person. Unfortunately, I started to realize that as logic and rationality were building up in my mind, imagination was flowing out. The day that I first really noticed that this was happening, I was at my cousins’ house. We were hanging out and telling ghost stories, just like we had a long time ago, when we were just kids and really believed all the stories we told. The day before, I had been trying to write a story. I stared at my computer screen, but I could not dredge up one single good idea from the depths my mind. I slapped the lid of my laptop shut with disgust and tried to think about other things, thinking that an idea would come floating into my head when I wasn’t reaching out for it so desperately. Now, at my cousins’ house, we were talking about all the ghosts we used to believe in. We talked like we all still believed, though. At least, my cousins did. They talked about all the hauntings and the ways we used to scare ourselves like it was real. I kind of nodded and laughed along with them, not sure if we were playing a game for the sake of old-times, or if they really meant it. One of my cousins, Sam, brought up the story of Adrian, a ghost we used to think haunted our grandparents’ house. We used to convince ourselves that every little sound or shadow was Adrian. We even made a little spinner, like a spinner from a board game, with a tack and a cardboard arrow that we could flick to make it twirl around and point to words we’d written on a piece of paper. “Yes / No / Maybe” were the words we’d scrawled in our big round kids’ handwriting. We would set the spinner next to an open window, and all say together, “Adrian, Adrian, are you there?” If nothing happened (and nothing usually did), we would go off and play, and come back and check on the spinner to see if it had moved. If it was pointing to “yes,” we would start running around, giggling and screaming. The rare times when there was a breeze right at the time we said our little chant, and the spinner moved right before our eyes, we would completely freak out, no matter which of the words it was pointing to. “Yes” meant “yes,” and “maybe” meant yes, but he was being coy with us. “No” naturally meant there was some other ghost hanging around; perhaps a more sinister one than Adrian. That day we sat at the kitchen table, drinking Cokes and laughing about what silly kids we used to be, but when my cousins talked about Adrian, it was with total seriousness. “Remember the time he pulled the blankets down on my bed?” Sam asked. “Oh yeah!” said Dana. “Or when he knocked down that statue of a brass cat that Grandma used to have on the shelf?” I couldn’t stand it anymore. Were they serious? “Guys,” I said. “You know Adrian wasn’t real, right? You know that that statue could have fallen down for a lot of different reasons, and you probably half-dreamed your blankets being pulled off when they really just fell. Tell me you don’t still believe in Adrian.” “No way!” Dana shook her head. “There’s no way that statue could have just fallen down by itself. It was way back on the shelf. And I know Sam wasn’t dreaming about the blankets. Tell the story, Sam.” Sam stared at me like he thought I had lost my mind. “I was sleeping at Grandma’s house one night, and I woke up and couldn’t move. I felt this presence in the room with me. It started pulling my blankets off. I was freezing cold, and I saw a dark outline of a person, like a shadow standing over my bed.” “Sleep paralysis,” I said immediately. “What?” said Sam, annoyed. “I read an article about it. It happens to a lot of people. It’s where you start to wake up, but part of your brain is still asleep and dreaming. There are all kinds of stories, through like, all of human history, where people claim they had demons or ghosts or aliens come in their rooms at night, and they couldn’t move. Whatever the people in a certain culture believe in, that’s what they would dream about coming in to their room. Like medieval people would think demons or fairies would come sit on their chest, or Arabian people would think genies would come in their rooms, and modern American people think they’re seeing ghosts or that they’re being abducted by aliens. But it’s just your brain not working right for a few minutes.” “Well thank you, professor know-it-all,” said Dana. “I know what I saw,” Sam said defiantly. “Besides, after a while, Adrian followed us. He started haunting us here, too. He’s still here. He still does things sometimes.” “We should do the spinner thing again!” Dana said. “That will prove it.” I tried not to roll my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. Really? The spinner? Really?”You still have that?” “No,” said Dana defensively. “I’ll make another one.” She went to the closet and dug around until she found an old boardgame that had been buried for years. “Ah-ha!” she yelled when she found a spinner inside. Then she grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from the desk in the next room and carefully wrote “Yes / No / Maybe” on the sheet of paper, tore it in half, and slid it under the spinner’s arrow so that it pointed to the words she had written instead of the numbers that told you how many spaces to go on your turn. She took a few deep breaths, then closed her eyes, like a medium conducting a seance in a movie. “Adrian, Adrian, are you there?” she whispered. Sam and I both stared at the spinner. Nothing happened. Dana opened her eyes slowly and stared, too. “Maybe we should hold hands and all say it together,” she said. Oh boy, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. I did it just to humor her, and Sam appeared to feel just as silly as I felt. “Adrian, Adrian, are you there?” we all said together. I felt weirdly nostalgic, like we were little kids again, and I smiled even though we were doing something I thought was ridiculous. Once again, nothing happened. Dana sighed. “I think we should leave it for a while, then come back and check like we used to.” We went outside for a while, finishing our drinks and finding other things to talk about. After a half an hour or, so, Dana couldn’t stand it and went back in to check. Sam and I followed. The spinner hadn’t moved. “You do remember that we used to set it by an open window where the wind could move it, right?” Dana shot me a look. “Maybe your negative energy is keeping Adrian from appearing.” “Maybe,” I said, laughing a little. After that, we talked a little more, but it wasn’t as much fun as it had been. My cousins thought I was calling them stupid. Things felt kind of awkward after that. I tried to talk a little more, but I ended up just making an excuse to leave. The next time I sat down to write, I thought about that day. Was the fact that I couldn’t seem to think of any creative ideas anymore connected to the fact that I no longer believed in extraordinary things? When I lost my ability to believe in these things, did I lose my imagination, too? I was ready to slam down the lid of my laptop again and walk away. I didn’t seem to have any creativity left. I got up and paced the room. It was like my need to understand the real world had left me without any power to make up something that was not real. Then, finally, an idea struck. I sat down at my computer and began to type a title. I typed “Adrian” across the top of the page. I would tell the story of a ghost who haunted to children all their lives because they were the only ones who believe in him. Sure, it wasn’t the greatest idea for a story I had ever had, but it was something. I was back on the way to getting my creativity back. I was able to daydream again. Read More