Imagination

“Good afternoon and welcome to Imagination Class, Session One of Series One.  Today, we are going to be discussing …”

            “Why are we meeting at lunchtime?” asks the nerdy girl sitting in the front row wearing thick glasses, slid down to the end of her nose.  She’s wearing jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops to be cool but it’s failing miserably.  The nerdiness is seeping from her oily pores.   

            “Because I am not a morning person.  One of the ways we humans survive is …”

            “Then why not wait and hold class at night,” suggests a very pregnant housewife sitting in the back of the classroom so she can rest her swollen ankles on the empty chair in front of her and her notebook (notebook as in paper and metal spiral) is balanced on her swollen stomach, nature’s build-in desk.

            “Because I write at night.  Our brain holds the key to …”

            “Which is why you’re not a morning person if you’re up all night writing which is evident by those bags under your eyes,” comes from the skinny all-in-black Goth girl from where she sits off to my left, wearing more eye makeup on her face than I have in my bathroom cabinet.

            “That’s two ‘which is’ in the same sentence,” I tell her just to get even.  “In this series of classes, we hope to discover …”  

            “Right, shut up.  I’m here to learn something,” orders the fat middle-aged woman from dead center of the room.  She’s wearing flat sensible shoes with the ‘I am an author’ business suit, reading glasses on beaded chain around her neck and butch shorter-than-men’s haircut highlighting the long dangly earrings that do not go with the outfit.  She has a new touch pad computer in front of her and I worry about being recorded.

            “If I may continue …”

            “Everyone knows you can’t teach imagination.  You either have it or you don’t.  Like talent.”  Nerdy Girl doesn’t even have a notebook on her desk.

              “Some people believe that but even having imagination and talent alone do not make a sellable story.”

            “What’s the fishbowls for?”  Goth Girl is renewing her black fingernail polish whose fumes are turning the pregnant lady green. 

I’d pass the trash can back but there are only four of them spread out across the classroom, as if they were afraid to sit to close to one another.  “If all of you would shut up long enough for me to … sorry.  The fishbowls will come into play in a minute.  Now …” I hesitate to try to remember how far I had gotten only to realize I haven’t even started.  “… If you use your imagination, anything and I mean anything can be built into a storyline.”

“Prove it,” Goth Girl challenges.

“Okay.  Why don’t you and this … young lady from the front row come forward.  Each of you take one folded piece of paper from separate fishbowls and hand them to me.”  I watch as they actually listen to me and follow directions all though I have to pull Goth Girl’s paper off her wet fingernail.  They return to their seats and I turn to the blackboard.

I unfold the first scrap of paper.  “Goldfish.”  And I write ‘goldfish’ on the board.  Unfurling the second and getting polish on my fingers, I find the words ‘ping pong ball’.  I add that on the board under ‘goldfish’.

“You spelled ‘ping pong’ wrong,” Nerdy Girl says.

“How can you tell?” asks Middle-Ager wanna-be author.  “You have the most atrocious handwriting I have ever seen,” she says to me.

“You should put a hyphen between them,” suggests Pregnant Lady.

“You should have put a hymen between you and the balls then you wouldn’t be in the shape you are in,” Goth Girl tells her.  “And why all of a sudden after two pages into this chapter is she a lady?” she asks me.

“If you put a hyphen between ‘ping’ and ‘pong’ you have to capitalize it because it becomes a game and copyrighted like Monopoly©.”  Middle-Ager has put her reading glasses on so she can glare at us through them.  The chain gets caught in her earrings and I fear for her lobe.

 “You seem to have capitalized on holding a monopoly on the conversation in this room,” Goth Girl tells her, “and if you think this is a game, I would suggest you …”

“Shut up,” I yell out over their squabbling.  Silence descends.  I take a deep calming breath.  “Okay.  I am going to show you how, using your imagination and whatever talent you may have, to make a story using … the two words written on the board.”

“There are four words written …” Nerdy Girl stops talking when I kick her … desk leg.

“Now in your minds picture goldfish and ping pong balls and see where the two might exist together.  Okay, I have one and am going to tell you the story I see in my mind.”  I’m either on a roll here or at least they have all shut up.

*

            The carny sat balanced on a tattered old lawn chair hoping his razor sharp hips and skinny ass didn’t break through the two remaining nylon strips.  He had been stationed at the Goldfish Toss Booth this evening, not his normal post of Knock Down the Doll.  He didn’t know the reason for the switch up but would make do with what he had.  He had even remembered to scoop out the non-swimmers, feed the tiny goldfish circling in their minuscule wet prison urns and stack boxes of ping pong balls under his chair within easy reach.  He knew the way the game worked.  It would mostly be excited toddlers and frazzled moms because this was the one game the little ones could manage and win at every time.  The moms would be the one who would have to deal with the deaths and funerals at flushing sea after they got home when the goldfish floated to the top.

            But if he got a bunch of rowdy teenagers acting up (what his mom used to say about him more years ago than he cared to remember) and scaring the little kids, he had a special box of ping pong balls he brought with him in one pocket of his money-collecting apron.  The balls were just a wee bit bigger than normal and would not fit down into the opening of the fishbowls.  No one would ever win using the special balls.

            It normally didn’t happen.  Toddlers were in bed before the teenage gangs descended on the carnival.  But as he watched, a male-type-teen dressed in sneakers, black t-shirt, huge gold peace symbol hanging from a chain around his neck, and black pants whose hem stirred the dust and whose waistband hung down low enough to show off his chessboard black and white boxers approached the booth, dragging miniature male by the hand.  The little boy’s other hand was busy cramming his thumb down his own throat.

            “Little dude wants a fish,” the teenager said.

            “Three balls for a dollar.”  The carny held out his hand but didn’t rise from his seat.

            The older boy managed to dig a dollar bill out of his jeans without lowering them any further.  “I looked for you over by the dolls.”  He collected his three balls and placed one in the free dry hand of the shorter one.

            “Kid doesn’t look like the doll type to me,” the carny said as he watched the badly aimed ball bounce off the tent roof of the booth.  “Good arm.”

            “He’d done better at the dolls.  He really wanted a doll.  I hear they’re very special dolls with powers to take you far.”  He handed the next ball down to the kid who had switched thumbs.

            “Balls,” corrected the carny.

            “What?”

            “Very special balls not dolls.”  The kid’s aim hadn’t improved and this one hit the edge of the table, bounced back and smacked the carny right in the middle of the forehead.  “Hey,” he complained.

            “Sorry,” the teenager apologized.

            “He could have put my eye out.”

            “Whatever.”  He passed down the last ball.  “So how much for the special balls not dolls?”

            “More than you can afford.  Get the kid a fish and move off.  And you should know peace signs went out in the sixties.”

            He watched as the teenager smirked at him, lifted the chain and kissed the peace symbol.  The boy grabbed the younger one and pulled him away from the booth screaming the whole way because he didn’t get a fish.  The carny could hear the teenager talking into his necklace.  “You guys hear that?”  He was yelling to make himself heard over the kid’s protests.  “You moved him and tore all those dolls up for nothing.  It’s in the balls.”

            In his attempt to get up, the carny fell through the chair and needed the help of the two big men in uniform he found surrounding him to lift him out, all the while bellowing about police brutality because of the welt in the middle of his forehead.  But it was his butt that cracked open the balls … the ping pong balls spreading great clouds of white powder up in the air.

*

            “The end,” I say.

            “That’s just sad,” the Pregnant Lady says, taking her feet down.  I wonder if she means the story or the outcome or the creator.

            “No, the word for it is ‘contrived’.  I’ll bet she had a story ready for any combination of words you pulled out of there.  Or maybe they all have the same words written on them.”  The Middle-Ager whiner is trying to work her way out of a desk designed for college sized students.

            “Well, it’s your turn.  Draw two out and make up the next story.”  I shake the fishbowls in their direction.

            “No, don’t,” warns the Goth Girl.  “They’re real fishbowls.  My hand still smells.  And you totally missed on dressing a teenage boy.  If I had been writing it …”

            I scrubbed them.  I really did but once that fishy smell gets in something ...  “Where are all of you going?”

            “Class is over.  You used up the whole time on that story,” Nerdy Girl says as she heads for the door.  She stops and turns back.

            “Yes?” I ask, afraid of the answer.

            “You screwed up.”

            “How?  Where?”

            “The slip of paper said ‘ping pong ball’ singular nor plural.”  She slips out the door before I can respond.

            I’ll bet she wants to be an editor when she grows up.