Imagination

You know when you'd watch cartoons as a kid and whenever a character was imagining something, the scenery around said character would magically transform into the surroundings of some far-off plane?  The transformation would be so apparent and seamless that it would be impossible to doubt that 'imagination' was the childhood equivalent of peyote or LSD.

Fun fact: I frequently confuse 'LSD' with 'LCD'.
Give me a hit of that Sony, I wanna forget eeeeverything!

For the longest time as a child, I was convinced that I had zero imagination as I was acutely missing this huge transformative process whenever I played Pretend.
Once, I had a friend from school over at my house and she actually told me that I had a very active imagination and I got mega upset.  Like...Godzilla-level upset.

I couldn't make her understand that I didn't have any imagination at all -- so concrete was my belief in this poorly justified assertion -- so I simply huffily ignored her and refrained from talking to her for a while.  The next day at school, she called me a 'jackass' and I cried for an entire week, all the while imagining that she, in turn, had turned into a jackass -- kinda like in Pinocchio, but way cooler.  


It was then that I realized that you don't need the smoke and mirrors that TV seems to use to veil the very simple process of imagining things, nor do you need LSD, peyote, or LCD TVs -- although those things can certainly enhance and colour your wonderful imaginings.