I was about 8 years old. At this age I coveted having a big red metal toy Tonka fire truck. Hook and Ladder with crank up extending ladders, and a real operating siren. Articulated with cab and trailer. Real rubber tires. It was just beyond cool.
It was just before my birthday and I went to bed. I couldn’t wait any longer . There was this box under my bed and I got it and opened it. Oh gosh ! - It was my Hook and Ladder. I took it out and started to play right then and there, cranking and wheeling it all around on the floor. I was ecstatic. I could have played all day, but then...
Mom woke me up. Whaaat! Where was my fire truck? I threw off covers and looked under my bed. Nothing. The whole room revealed no fire truck. I was crushed. I asked Mom, “What did you do with my fire truck?”
“What Fire truck?”
“The one I just got for my birthday. I just was playing with it”
“Jerry, honey, your birthday isn’t till next week and there is no fire truck. You were just dreaming.”
“NO,” I was crushed. That whole day I kinda sheepishly searched everywhere. No fire truck. But it was so REAL ! I was positive it wasn’t a dream.
But it was, and I carry that memory to this day. I learned two things. I have a very vivid and creative imagination, and that my dreams often bring much more than some semi conscious shuffling of a sleep-reorganizing brain.
I still wake up with ideas that have formulated in sleep . I call them “messages from my muse”. Some of my best writing has come from that “muse.” If I rise from a dead sleep and go write the thoughts down right then, the next day I find some amazing notes and scribbles that have turned into some of my best poems and stories. Even descriptions of visualizations have often become paintings or drawings. Reality from dreams.
I do not understand it, but it is real and I have earned to honor it with respect. If I do not write things down immediately, they will have dissipated into ether in the morning. Gone forever. There are never repetitions.
Then, there is my love of reading. Yes, I admit to being a movie buff. I adore visualizations in film and in static art, but it is reading a book where my mind travels to places I otherwise would never see. Places and people come alive. When I see a movie adapted from a book I have read, it is but a pale image. Color never as bright. Places never as vibrant somber or radiant . People never as interesting or fleshed out. I really get lost in books, I live in them, and like that dream, they seem so real to me. Equal to any reality in my waking hours , and, yes, in full color.
If interrupted out of a deep read, I am surprised and disoriented for a few moments, because my world has been destroyed. I want that image world back. It was so real to me. Just like when I played with that fire engine.
I embrace my psyche. Whatever is generating up in my brain, I consider a gift . Even today, when I think about that old dream, I get a warmth, a pleasure, and comfort from remembering that cool Fire Engine, even if it never was real.
I have come to realize sometimes the best things in life aren’t .
-Jerry Wendt 2018
...and a small but pertinent note; This very story came from “My Muse” . I wrote the idea down, out of a deep sleep late Sunday night, and read it this morning, thinking, “This will make a great story”. So I sat down and wrote this. What do you think?
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