photo from ‘mermaids, the body found’
One morning last week as I was drinking my first cup of coffee my son yells from the living room “Dad come see this!”.
You have to understand our morning ritual to see how out of character this is for him. Like myself, he is an early riser by nature, so we are usually both up by 6:30 or so. I go to the kitchen table with my coffee and laptop, he goes to the living room with his laptop and the tv. After about a half hour or so, once we are awake, we meet up again and are ready to talk.
So, a little surprised. I make my way to the living room where he watching a commercial on the discovery channel about a show that is to air next week called ‘Mermaids, The body Found’. I imagine you get the gist of the show by the title. My son loves shows like this, he loves shows about Big Foot, and UFO’s and ghosts, although between me and you he is a bit scared of these ones. I love this kind of stuff too and encourage him to get his hands on as many mysteries he can, just like I did with his sisters when they were young. My wife, who is a very practical woman thank god or I would probably live in a cardboard box, doesn’t get it. She thinks that it’s all bullshit, which it probably is, but that’s not the point. The point is just being a kid and seeing a world where there are things we don’t understand, things that are worth exploring and wondering about. The point is about using and expanding your imagination, believing, even for just a little bit, that maybe there is magic out there that we can’t explain. Shit, I want the truth to be out there!
Now here is the tricky part.
The tricky part is trying to keep a little of the spark alive in a world where we have a mortgage to pay, and traffic to sit in, and a boss to please, etc. etc. you get the picture. I think guys like Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg and Stan Lee (I am sure you can think of a few to put into this category) held onto some of that wonder from their childhood. Growing up tries to squash that out of you, but I think if you look hard enough, there is still some of it left in all of us.
So next week we will turn off the lights, cuddle up on the couch together and turn on ‘Mermaids’. When my son asks me “Dad could that be real?” I will tell him “Son I don’t know, but just imagine if….”
Gus
gussinaround 