Imagination Station

My boys love to dress up, which I assume is a condition of childhood, like sticky hands and sudden thirst. At our house we have built a respectable costume department. The outfits appear first as Halloween plans, then as daily uniforms, because Halloween, as every parent knows, is not a date so much as a season of negotiation.

Some costumes get worn thin before trick or treating ever arrives. I cannot help it. If a cape comes into the house, it belongs on a child immediately. A costume is a small piece of fabric with the power of a spell. It turns ordinary kids into extraordinary ones, or at least into kids who believe they are extraordinary, which is much the same thing.

For a little while they are Ghostbusters or superheroes or creatures that should not be indoors. They move with purpose. They talk with authority. Their world widens. Adults do not pretend as easily, and that is one of the quiet losses that comes with growing up. Children live in a country with no borders, and we spend our later years applying for visas.

I sometimes think the most practical thing an adult can do is to join in. Put away the day’s arguments and errands. Put on a mask, or better yet a cape, and become someone else for a moment. It is good for the spirit and it costs less than therapy.

“A child is a curly dimpled lunatic.”  — Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet

I did not always need to be talked into this. When I was five, I owned a cowboy outfit and a badge, and that was enough to make me certain I was the law. I remember riding the Heber Creeper in Heber Valley when a group of train robbers staged a holdup, galloping alongside the cars and climbing aboard with bandanas and dramatic voices. A burly man waved a gun and ordered everyone to put their hands up.

My hands went up with everyone else, but my mind did not. I had a badge. I had a plastic pistol. The fact that I was small did not seem important. I slipped out of my seat, crept up behind the robber, aimed my toy weapon with all the seriousness I could gather, and said, “Get your hands up. You are under arrest.”

To my astonishment, he did. He raised his hands. Then, without either of us quite knowing what came next, I marched him to the door and he stepped off the train when it stopped. The adults clapped. I became a hero in my own story, which is what most of us want anyway.

There was a photograph of the moment. I remember my grin. I remember the robber’s surrender. We kept that picture for years, and then, as happens with the best artifacts of childhood, it vanished into the great lost and found of family life. I still wish I had it. It is one of the few photographs of myself that I like, not because I look handsome, but because I look certain.

“Children see magic because they look for it.”  — Christopher Moore, writer

 Now that I am a father, I welcome my boys’ costumes as if they were a form of weather. If we are building something, a construction outfit appears. If we are jumping on the trampoline, Spider Man shows up. Years ago our house was full of Catboy and Gekko, and the living room took its lumps.

But the costume that has endured in our home is Ghostbusters. The first jacket we bought for my oldest was outgrown and passed down to his little brother, and then replaced, and then replaced again. Soon he will be on his third edition, as if the Ghostbusters have a uniform contract.

They wear those jackets everywhere, and I mean everywhere. They hunt ghosts at the grocery store. They scout for paranormal activity at community events. My oldest wears his to school most days of the week, in every season. We told him not to wear it on picture day. He wore it anyway. We love it, because it is proof that he is still living in that borderless country.

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”  — Fred Rogers, television personality

Children can teach us things we forget. They teach us wonder, awe, and the usefulness of play. Those qualities fade like breath on a cold morning, and if we are not careful, we begin to treat life as nothing but duty. We become afraid of looking foolish, though we cannot quite say why. We watch the rare grownups who still know how to play and we pretend we are judging them, when really we envy them.

Adults dress to impress or to belong, or sometimes just to avoid attention. Many of us spend a whole year trying to match and blend and look appropriate. It may explain why Halloween is so beloved by people who file taxes and attend meetings. For one day, Rick from accounting can be Captain Underpants, and someone’s mother can become Cruella de Vil. The grownup armor cracks. The kid inside slips out, does a lap around the block, and returns laughing.

“Every child you encounter is a divine appointment.”  — Wess Stafford, President Emeritus of Compassion International

The trouble is that growing up moves fast. One day you are a child with a badge, and the next day you are checking the news and answering emails and calling it a life. We look for escape in television or scrolling, but it is a pale substitute for the old kind of escape, the kind that involves standing up, putting on something ridiculous, and believing it.

Cynicism is easy to come by. Wonder takes work. Kids are better at wonder. They can transform with a costume. I sometimes wish we could do the same, not by turning childish, but by staying a little childlike. The world might be kinder if more of us could walk up to a stranger and say, with complete sincerity, “Do you want to be my friend?”

“While we try to teach our children all about life, Our children teach us what life is all about.”  — Angela Schwindt, home schooling mom States