WEIRDO OR CREATIVE GENIUS?

My son, Reeve, is at an age where I am starting to see his imagination come to life. Simple things to us adults, are completely different in the eyes of a 2 ½ year old. And it’s so very interesting to view it from the perspective as a parent.

An apple, is now a super high speed ball…..flung at my clean walls. Snot, is now a high protein food for his body. The toy bike, is now his imaginary friend who must keep quiet, in case I hear them hiding out in the closet. His imagination is on fire!

As he is male, I know I am up for lots of fast and high powered action. He has taken an interest in pretending to be one of the marvel comic characters each day. It goes from Superman, to Batman, to Spiderman. Whatever he is in the mood for, and who he feels like impersonating…..

CUTE! CUTE! CUTE!

Seeing him grow up in front of my eyes, and putting his imagination to use……I tried to remember when I was a kid, and what creative ideas I used to keep myself entertained. I was brought up as an only child, so I sort of had to get the mind thinking! Not that I didn’t have friends or kids to play with, but I still needed to use my imagination a bit.

Now, some of the below truths I am about to announce to you, may make you think I am a complete weirdo…..or a creative genius!! Probably the former. But I am a graphic designer by trade, so I feel that some of my ‘weird’ and ‘strange’ behaviours as a child, helped me to become an awesome and creative adult.

I say these things in complete confidence that you won’t tell anyone else…..okay? Okay?…………I will take your word for it.

1. Ever since I can remember, I distinguished every letter of the alphabet, as having a gender. Yes, you heard me right. There were male and female letters. They also had relationships between each other. Because…..I have no freaking clue why, they just did.

Am I weirdo, or a creative genius? Shutup! I am a genius!!

I have no idea where I got this idea from, but I believe it helped me to learn the alphabet, plus put words and sentences together whilst I was learning at school. I can give you a few examples:

A is female. B is male. C is male. A & B are married, and C is their child.
D is male. E is male. F is male. D, is E’s father, and E & F are best friends….but F is a bit of a dick, and doesn’t treat E like a friend…(who the hell knows why. I wish I could ask my younger self that question).

Following me so far? It’s cool if you’re not.

G is male. H is female. I is male. G & H are married, and I is their son.  H also wears the ‘pants’ in the family. Probably because there aren’t many females in her ‘alphabet town’, so she needs to show some superiority, and not let the female sex be the minority…….or maybe she’s just a bit of a bitch.
J is male, K is female, L is male, M & N are female. J has a crush on K, but K is in love with L, and L is M & N’s big brother (M & N are sisters).

H is female, okay?

It sounds like freaking Days of our Lives in the alphabet world! I could tell you the rest of them, but this post would go on waaaay too long.

I know a lot of you out there, are probably thinking, “WTF??”. But it’s all true and it was how I thought of the alphabet. Look, I couldn’t make this shit up, even if I tried. So I swear, I’m not pulling this stuff out of my bum.

2. Another thing, is when I was around the age of 6 – 8 years old, I used to record my own voice, and pretend I was the host on a radio station. My Nan had this little old radio that had a microphone attached to it, and I thought it was the BEST THING EVER!! I would record my voice, sing songs (there was Michael Jackson and Belinda Carlisle melodies). I would interview pretend people (myself, obviously). Plus give the weather, and heaps of very other important shit.

Man, I used to even interview the cat if I got desperate! I would ask the family pet things like, “So, how is your day going today puss?” There would be silence or purring the other end. Then I would have to answer for him, or repeat the question until I got a ‘meow’ out of him. The cat never really cooperated well, so the interview was cut short most of the time.

Speak up cat! Your on live radio! (image from http://www.thenextgreatgeneration.com)

My Mum has kept this little recording of my voice (it’s a whole tape), and listens to it to make herself cry with laughter.

3. Did you call your pet a normal name, like Spot, when you were younger? If I knew you back then, I would question that name. My Grandparents had a small farm when I was growing up, and I had the very important job of naming the animals. My weirdo mind ticked away and came up with names like ‘Lundell’ and ‘Borton’, for the cats. I would spend hours coming up with the ‘perfect name’ for all the animals they had….cats, dogs, horses, chickens, budgies etc.

I wanted unique and strangely unusual names so they would stand out from the rest. Don’t give me any of this Snowball shit. I wanted names that would forever be remembered. When one of the cats lives came to an end, we would bury them and I would shout all priest like…….

“HERE LIES LUNDELL. THE CAT THAT WAS GREAT AS A KITTEN, BUT CHANGED INTO A BIT OF A BASTARD AS HE GOT OLDER. THANKS FOR BEING UNPREDICTABLE, AND MY FRIEND. BLESS YOU LUNDELL AND ALL YOUR WEIRDNESS! MEOW……or, Amen to all us humans”.

4.  All kids had their strange ways of avoiding monsters in their room. My way, was to always jump into my bed at night, but it had to be at least one metre away from my bed. Of course, the monsters under the bed had zero chance of attacking my feet and body then. Apparently these monsters were a bit hopeless at their job, and couldn’t grab me if I did a running long jump into bed.

Are you thinking I am Rain Man now? Well, he was a genius, you know.

The genius.

5. I could always remember every detail from my dreams when I woke in the morning. EVERY BLOODY DETAIL! Mum would have the shitty job of listening to me when I got up the next morning. Two hours later, she walked off, saying “Great Kelly. Sounds like an interesting and very looooong dream”.

I have got lots more imagination stories from my childhood, but I think I am starting to sound super strange. So I think I had better shutup.

Creativity and imagination is what we want from our kids. It’s so amazing how they make up their own ‘worlds’, ‘imaginary friends’, and things that make you think as a parent, “What??? Where did you get that idea from? But that’s so awesome!!”

Do you remember any weird or creative imagination stories you had as a youngster? Please share them in the Comments section below. I want to hear if you were a weirdo (like me), or creative genius (like me).

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Love (as Reeve says),

xxoo

p.s. I swear I am a fit Mother. I am just a super strange, fit Mother.