When I saw today that the author of, “Where The Wild Things Are,” had died, it took me back.  Way back! 

I remember having this book as a child and to me, the book was the how to manual of how to create imaginary friends and fantasy lands and not feel ashamed of them! I spent many a rainy afternoon (and many sunny ones as well) in my imaginary worlds with imaginary characters and plots of evil and horror and some rather tame, depending on my mood.  

Most of all, with my manual at hand I realized that my odd delight of holing up in my bedroom with all my rubber dinosaurs and monsters and delivering each with its own unique voice, or growl, was perfectly acceptable as a kid.  It was right there in the book.  Go look and see!

But with age come memory loss and conformity.  If you loose the ability to create fantasies, you loose the nerve to see them to completion, let alone tell anyone about them. You certainly don’t mention to the boys at the water cooler about your imaginary partner you played a round of golf with the other day.  Yeah, it can get kinda boring.

I suppose I still had the imaginative streak in me which is probably why I became a writer in the August of my life.  What can I say, I’m a late bloomer.

It is also probably why I became so very familiar with the bottle as well.  Normal life is actually rather boring and seldom goes the way we would like it to.  Much easier to curl up with a six-pack or twelve-pack or thirty-pack and ease ones troubled mind.

Thank you Maurice for your gift to over imaginative boys and girls all around the world. It took this boy thirty-five years to come back to what he’d love so long ago but, at least he made the trip home.  

Frank Say

5/8/2012