The Great Escape

            When I was younger my imagination was my escape from just about anything. Whether the day was good or bad my imagination took me to places that where almost unbelievable. My imagination taught me how to get out of my own head for a little bit.

            I couldn't actually go anywhere because I was too young to actually travel by myself so my backyard became my sandbox turning into whatever I wanted it to be whether it be a jungle a desert or maybe even outer space. Because my imagination was what constructed my sandbox, there was no such thing as a limit to what I could come up with.

            As soon as I would step through the screen door into my backyard the yard turned into a jungle so I did what any other kid would do naturally in that situation, I started running around like a mad man. While I was running around my mom would let out our little dachshund out in the yard with me. Because my imagination was already let loose that dachshund immediately turn into a massive tiger chasing me down, unfortunately that tiger was extremely quick and caught me, took me down and attacked me with many licks. Sometimes our dog would turn into an alien from outer space and we were on their planet, and I would start walking around the yard as if I were in zero gravity. But my imagination, even though it was like I was getting deeper into my mind it was also allowing me to get out of my mind to forget everything that has happened.

            A few years passed and I was able to actually walk the neighborhood by myself, I still had an extremely overactive imagination so when I had an off day I would take a page out of the old book and I would go outside and run around the neighborhood imagining most of the time that I was on a secret mission that I had to get from my house to the other end of the neighborhood as fast as I could. I would pretend like it was a plot from a spy movie with bad guys chasing me and all. It allowed me to forget about what was going while I was out there no matter how bad it was.  When I ran it felt like I was running away from my problems just for a little bit just long enough for me to figure out what I had to do about what ever situation I had gotten myself into.

            All of this taught me a very valuable lesson that I still carry with me today, all of those things taught me how to get out of my head to think about certain situations. I don’t have the imagination that I had when I was younger but I can still take myself out of the world just long enough for me to solve whatever my problem might be, even though it’s not the jungle or a secret mission it still got the job done.