I’ve been at this for several years now after starting with the intention to be a forum to communicate family experiences. I figured it was a great way to launch a stream of thought while allowing people to peak into our occasionally wacked out life with two insano little boys. When I started this blog, I had only one rule and that was to not edit myself.

As I worked through entry after entry and topic after topic, I began to realize that my unedited thoughts and feelings are sometimes best left unsaid. Or in this case, unwritten. So I moved away from that one rule and moved closer to having guidelines. Things like not naming names, staying away from emotionally questionable topics, only using swearing as a point of emphasis, and using music on the blog to complement the story.

After following that framework for some time, I found myself wanting to write more. Explaining more of how I feel about things, life challenges, and how difficult it is to just be alive. So I began to pen down those elements. While my thoughts and feelings were relevant and challenging, I worried that readers would be concerned over my state of mental and emotional health. So those entries stayed outside the pixels of this blog.

Despite the guidelines to remain relevant, I’ve enjoyed being able to provide a story or two that catch a laugh or get readers to think and feel. For that, I’m grateful for the opportunity to write and have someone read. I’ve lost the desire to draw and visually create these last few years but I’ve found great inspiration and creativity in writing and expressing the uniqueness of my family life here.

That lengthy preface brings me to my topic of the entry. Creativity. Everyone has a degree of it; the only difference is that we each channel it in our own unique way. For me, it’s here in a random story about Son #1 and his imagination.

The story begins with my wife leaving for an obligation and Son #1 and I looking for some way to spend our time during her absence. Christmas was months ago, but not all of the gifts Son #1 received have been opened. The reason? The little dude all ready has too much shit. But as we retire some toys, we open others and add them into circulation. This day, we were advised of the availability of a new toy in one of our closets.


It was a Matchbox product like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Back in the day, Matchbox only made die cast cars. This was like a buildable, outer space ready, dinosaur hunting, wheeled, imagination inspiring, machine. This set had a ton of pieces and could be built in to endless designs of vehicles and machines. We spent the next hour or so, building the various different examples on the packaging. But both he and I reached a threshold where pretty pictures on the box weren’t enough. It was time to go off the grid and exercise our own creativity.

So we broke away from ‘suggested’ designs and crafted our own. I’ve found as I’ve become a parent that I still love playing with toys. However, my play stops when I’m done building. There seems to be a roadblock in place that makes it hard to imagine a story for the toys like I used to be able to fabricate. It’s seems my imagination to play has faded.

After one of our last creations was built, I leaned back against the wall just to take it all in. What I witnessed next was both amazing and disheartening as a father. Let me explain. It was as if Son #1 was born in the land of make-believe. With his new ‘machine,’ he dropped into an imaginative story mode and began to vividly describe where his little explorers and machine were venturing. It was a prehistoric land of dinosaurs and volcanoes where the play table in our bonus room was a cliff over a river. His explorers were on an ‘adventure’ to find a red dinosaur.

But my surprise didn’t end with the description of the adventure from Son #1. He eloquently bounced between story narrative and the dialogue and action of the explorers. And the play of the roles of the explorers included urgency, emotion, perseverance, and teamwork during the adventure. I never thought in my short years as a father that he knew this kind of stuff. It was like a little dramatic action packed screen play brought to me by Son #1.

The balance between the narrative description of the adventure and the actual ‘scenes’ he played out in front of my eyes were just amazing. Such an imaginative little guy. His story played out for the next hour as I watched in amazement. The innocence of imagination and play all rolled together.


But it reminded me of where I am now. Where did our collective imagination go? The innocence of play has deteriorates as we continue to ‘grow up.’ There was a time in my life that hours could be spent with my Legos dumped all over the floor. I could build an entire space fleet, cityscape, or kingdom and play for hours acting out the smallest of nuances. And don’t get me started about G.I. Joe. I could literally play an entire day with my action figures. Acting out recruitment to mobilization to attack to defeat and to death in some cases.

Those days are behind me now which is fine. I don’t need to be the only 37 year old in my new neighborhood playing with action figures in my front yard. Wrong message to send. The concern is the creativity and imagination that are now retired as we age. It comes with some regret to know that our childhood phase of play is gone. The new phase is great too. You get to have the amazement that I mentioned above. While my imagination for play has been tabled, I’m blessed to still have a little bit of creativity and find inspiration in my son’s play. Now I get inspired by him and get to express it in my writing.