Imagination

All throughout elementary school and junior high I did Accelerated Reading, or AR. I read and read and read and I loved it! I read so many books that I hardly remember them. I read Alice in Wonderland in seventh grade. I do remember reading that book because it was so unlike all the others; Louis L’Amour, Hank the Cowdog, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and L.M. Montgomery were some of my favorites. However, I remember enjoying it much more in seventh grade than I enjoy it now as a freshman in college. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but I think maybe it’s because I’ve lost some of my imagination. I was still playing with Barbies and dolls and climbing trees when I was in seventh grade. I had to entertain myself because my sister was a junior in high school, way too cool to play with a little seventh-grader. School required more imagination in seventh grade than in high school and college; in science we would make colorful models of cells and plant flowers and pea plants. In English we would write our own stories and draw pictures to go with them. In high school, I started learning physics formulas, calculus graphs, diagramming sentences, and computer programs, not to mention that it wasn’t cool anymore to have an imagination. I am afraid that my once wild imagination has suffered some through the years and is more grown up that I would like for it to be.