The Curse of an Overactive Imagination

I had started to write this at 10:30 this morning but got distracted and only just came back to write it, at 11:30 at night, when I can barely think. Ah, well. To start, Mom and Dad had returned around 9 last night from their Mexico trip. None of us had gone to be until 11 or so, and I didn't really fall asleep until midnight.

Around 3:30 AM, Mom and I were up for paper routes. As my siblings were joining the youth group at an amusement park for the day, I took the duty of routes.

Wes had taken the car to pick up papers, planning to then drop off Mom's at the house so we could both do it at the same time. But the battery in the car had died, and the jump cables were sitting in our dead van, parked at Muffler Man and waiting to be repaired.. To top it all off, no one knew where any of the van keys had gone.

Why do adventures have to happen so early in the morning?

We headed to Muffler Man, praying all the way.

Thankfully, the van was unlocked and we got the cables and headed to the paper. By the time we arrived, some kind bystander had assisted Wes in restarting the car. We got our papers and headed out on routes.

By 6:15, we were home again, and both went back to bed. I woke around 9:30 after some very weird dream where a guy with a gun was robbing a bunch of people in the store and I saved the day. Or was in the process of it when I woke up. My last dreams every night tend to go something like that.

I woke to the dog barking downstairs. He never barks unless he's upset, and usually when he barks inside it's because someone is teasing him. I knew Mom and Dad weren't up, so I went to investigate (and as I'm leaving my room I hear the text message alert from my phone: Mom asking me to make the dog stop).

Hershey was standing by the front door, half-barking, half-growling. Peeking outside, I saw a brown truck parked outside our neighbor's house. I tell the dog to hush and continue to peer through the translucent glass in the door. Nothing happening. Still, my ridiculous imagination was already going to work running through a hundred different solutions.

Then a bright blue truck streaks by and parks in front of the neighbors on our other side. Hershey promptly moves to the window to whine. A lady gets out and unloads some stuff from her truck. Then minivan pulls up behind her.

In many ways this overactive imagination of mine is a good thing, considering I'm a writer. But it never stops working, and usually in relation to real life it tends toward pessimism. Rather irritating. I'd already witnessed cars driving slowly up and down the street over the last few days and become sufficiently unnerved, and then this.

I'm too embarassed to tell you what was going through my head at this moment.

I plead insanity. My mind was clearly not coherent.

And then the carriage appeared.

Yep.

A literal horse-drawn carriage loaded with ordinary people just rolled right on by.

What would you think after witnessing this display? Probably something sane, like my mother suggested as soon as she appeared to ask why the dog was still being noisy. Me, I want to know where the carriage came from, because it was coming from the dead-end side of the road where guardrails would have prevented it from coming through the park. Mom's totally unfazed.

Turns out the church at the end of the road was having some giant rummage sale and the carriage was part of the event. When I had stepped out of the room to grab something in the kitchen, the carriage had come down the street unnoticed by me and so seemed to magically appear when I returned.

I love my imagination. I love being able to create without any effort. But I am often ashamed of the sort of ideas that pop into my head. It's not wonder I have psychotic dreams. For the sake of my sanity and that of those around me, I pray God shows me how to put this creativity to really good use, or I'm in trouble.

Well, it's late and my mind is again becoming a drowsy mushball, so I'll stop here.