The Forgotten Imagination

By Steven Blanshan, Author of A Worm Named Hank

I am the father of four children. My oldest is 17 in a few days and my youngest is 7 in a few months. Ten small years separate them, one small decade, yet  in those ten years the world turned with such ferociousness and speed that it’s far more accurate to believe a thousand years have passed since these two children were born. The world of ten years ago has not only changed, it is gone. Disappeared, only alive in the history books and casual memories.

I trace the end of a world to the advancement of specific technologies, especially the introduction to every child of the smart phone. Texting, social, aggregator news apps, viral videos, etc. It changed things as drastically as its former technology the television did.

My Grandmother used to tell me stories of a world without the T.V. in which children had to go to an awful place to have entertainment.. a place with no air conditioning or heating, no couches or love seats. She called this horrible place, “outside”.

But for those of us children in the pre-smart phone era, television was only a distraction, something that our parents could easily turn-off and push us out the door or send us to our rooms, our entertainment from the tube ended with a push of the button and then in our boredom something magical happened, our best friend Imagination came to visit.

I am so inclined to believe that with the birth of “always connected” our smartphones in the hands of our children have left Imagination lost, forgotten and alone. Our little grade schoolers take their entertainment box with them everywhere, texting away, video watching, playing mobile games that think for them. And with the smart phone travels another far more dangerous companion for a child, The Real, Imaginations worst enemy.

With a quick question to Google our children can discover all the truths of the world, the answers to questions at a tab of a thumb, questions that used to be left to parents, grandparents, and Imagination to answer. Is there a Santa, How much money should the toothfairy give, Are there really hungry children in Africa and how do I send the food I don’t want to eat to them.

Or worse answers to worse questions.

Getting my youngest son, who doesn’t even have a smartphone yet, to sit and pretend is a challenge. He focuses on what is real, not what is make-believe and the days of a cardboard box containing hours of fun as a space ship, ranger fort, or castle, seem to gone, one hopes not forever.

Oh, I don’t hate technology – I’m writing a blog right now on the wonderful invention of the internet, but I wonder about technology… I wonder what its constant growth will do and I wonder about my best friend and where he will be hiding when my grandchildren are born.

So I throw out an idea to parents of children of all ages, let’s invite Imagination over for a little while to play. Tonight, let’s sit on our beds with our little guys and girls and ask them to come up with three things, any three things, and working together with Imagination let’s make a story about those three things.

A Dog. A Whistle. A Swimming Pool.

Or

An Alien. A Mouse. A Paperclip.

Or

A Fourth Grader named Jim. A Fifth Grader Named Lilly. A Book.

Or…