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So last night I had a dream that I was working the ticket booth at a minor league baseball game. It was awesome. I was a kid again and my childhood friend, Mike Butler, was working the popcorn beat. It was a dream gig.* I had a view of home plate. I didn’t have a single zit. Then, Cal Ripken Jr. comes up to the booth asking for tickets. The Cal Ripken Jr. You know, the guy who broke Lou Gehrig’s Major League Baseball record for 2,130 consecutive games played? The 19-time all-star infielder? The Iron Man? Yeah, well he was older with a pretty healthy gut, but even without the Orioles hat you couldn’t mistake him.
“Whoa, Cal Ripken!”
“Junior.”
“Right.”
“Gimme the best seats you got.”
That’s when I fainted.
Imagination is a wonderful thing. Conscious or not, it can take you to the most fantastic places with the most extraordinary people. And the wonder of imagination isn’t reserved for just children. Dreamers of all ages employ imagination on a regular basis to contemplate realities of which we might not otherwise be aware. Whether contemplating Columbus’ voyage of 1492 or theorizing about how to spend the winnings of that hypothetical lottery ticket, we humans use our imagination to wrap our brains around things that are beyond the realm of our experience.
In viewing imagination as a tool for understanding, we must do our best to encourage it in our children. At BookEnds we have the opportunity to see kids exercise their imagination on a regular basis. When brainstorming how to advertise for his school’s book drive, one 4th grade student suggested we rent a blimp and fly a large sign along the coast. While as a class we determined that might not be the most cost-effective option available to us, the blimp remained throughout our project a symbol of dreaming big. The students learned to harness that imagination and transform it into success. They collected over 4,000 books. The most in their school’s history.
When in my baseball dream I woke up from fainting, Mike was in the ticket booth with me. We looked down near home plate and saw Cal sitting in the third row. We sat in awe for a moment.
“Dude,” I said. “You know that’s Cal Ripken.”
“He’s really tall.”
“Yeah, his gut was like laying on the window sill.”
“Did you let him in without paying?”
“Yeah. I don’t even know how to work this computer thing.”
Then this little helicopter landed on the dugout and whistled up to the booth. Mike turned to me.
“It’s your ballgame, bro.”
As I left the booth and walked past Mr. Ripken, I gave him a wink. Then, even though I was never much of a pitcher, I grabbed a glove from the chopper and took the mound. The crowd went wild. I wasn’t sure why. But I ended up pitching a perfect game.
Only in dreams.
*Literally and figuratively.
Matt Devine,
BookEnds Program Manager
