Melody
had a very vivid imagination, which often got her into a lot of trouble. It was
also the reason that her parents rarely left her without reading material for
long periods of time. They valued the integrity of the house and remembered
often the moment that Melody’s chemistry set almost left a very large hole in
the roof. It was, of course, her last chemistry set. Oh well; it had been fun
while it lasted.
However,
her imagination was also one of the reasons that people who knew her well
tended to question the veracity of the stories she told. Not that she was
lying; in her mind, these things really happened. (Saturday’s story of the
haunted house trailer was true, though). It was this imagination that allowed
her to write stories, too.
When
she was in the fifth grade, she wrote a series of stories about a little
fire-breathing dragon that she and her brother Mark named Hotstuff. The reason
Mark had the right to help name him was because Mark was the illustrator of the
collection (even Melody had to admit that Mark drew much better than she did).
 |
| This little dragon slightly resembles our Hotstuff |
The
series was actually so well-liked that one of the school teachers, Mrs.
Dietrich, who taught the hearing-impaired children, asked if she could borrow
it to share with the children in her class. Melody and Mark entrusted it to her
care; it was the last time they saw it again. At that time, the only copying
machines were mimeographs and the process was long and unavailable to young
children. Mrs. Dietrich had been transferred to another school and so the
little book went with her.
It
may only have been a coincidence, but many years later, when Melody was a
mother, she was watching cartoons with her little daughter. She looked closer
at the TV and almost fell off her chair; there, on the screen, was a little
dragon that looked exactly like another little dragon she had seen almost
thirty years earlier, whose name was Hotstuff. The story-line was also a more
than a little familiar, too. But, without a personal copy, there wasn’t much
she could do about it. At least a lot of people could enjoy the fruits of
Melody’s and Mark’s vivid imagination.
Another
example of what some say was Melody’s imagination was Fluffy. Melody insists to
this day that Fluffy truly existed; she carried that little ball of feathers
all over creation with her. And, she wasn’t the only one who saw him. Her
Grammy saw him, too.
She
found Fluffy one day as she was lying out in the backyard counting ants. It was
another of those boring summer days when she had nothing to do and that usually
tended to get her into trouble. She had awoken from her five minute nap
perfectly refreshed (or at least as much as was possible on a hot summer’s day
in Southern California) and raring to go. Unfortunately for her, her brothers
and sister were still sleeping and Honey had told her to be quiet. She had
already counted two hundred forty-nine ants…
And
then she saw the little ball. It was weird the way it kept popping up, and some
might have called it an imaginary friend. Indeed, no one else saw it except
Grammy. In fact, even Melody didn’t remember putting it in her suitcase when
she went for a week to Grammy and Grampa’s house, but Grammy found it there in
the suitcase as she was helping Melody put her clothes in the chest-of-drawers.
But then again, she and Grammy had a lot in common…
She
imagined being a wild horse running on the plains; an eagle, flying high above
in the sky; sitting on clouds. She
dreamed of singing like an angel and of becoming a writer.
Maybe
it was because of her imagination that people imagined that she lived in a
world all her own… It could be, but there is one thing you could say about her:
when you were with Melody, you could count on not being bored.
Did you have a wonderful imagination when you were a child. Did you have an imaginary (according to others) friend?
Copyright © April 11, 2016. Mary Purpari. All Rights Reserved.
