This is a fun thread. It’s rare that I’m this imaginative but the husband is and frequently puts me in stitches with his little mini skits. A favorite one is when we need to pass each other in the hallway he will press his back into the wall, hands also flat against the wall and squirm past me like if he touches me we’ll both explode. He does the face and everything.
Once I was in the kitchen and decided to prank him when he walked in. When he did, I spun around and smacked him on the head with an aluminum pie pan. It made a satisfactory LOUD clank. Instead of getting pissed like any sane man, he immediately did a spin-fall cartoon knockout. And then we both died laughing. It’s why I love him.
I think it’s just a sign of an active imagination, myself. I especially like when you construct the illusion to get you out of the house on time, very clever.
Yes, I sometimes do similar things. But what always gives me pause, later in the day, is the consideration that perhaps, when I’m much older and beginning to become addled in mind, these very things will manifest again.
And maybe the stuff that dementia and Alzheimer’s patients routinely manifest are simply those silly fantasy distractions re emerging. Maybe they have more resonance than we imagine?
And, if that’s true, then I’m going to make sure all my future fantasy scenarios are much more imaginative and definitely more fun, fun, fun!
The other day I was in the grocery store with my shopping cart. I kept pushing it so that the rear wheels “drifted” around the corners like a Japanese race car. Some guy saw me and laughed because he knew exactly what I was doing.
I used to work cabin service for Delta Airlines. This basically involved me driving around in a truck on the tarmac refilling the airplanes with sodas and snacks.
The whole time I worked there I basically had the theme song to Mission Impossible going on in a constant loop inside my head. It made the job much more fun to pretend I was some sort of secret agent on a mission rather than a lowly grunt refilling airplanes with sodas and snacks.
I do similar things. When I’m putting on makeup in the morning, I mentally narrate my imaginary Youtube instruction video.
Sometimes when I am doing physical labor with another person (say putting away groceries), we are both moving quickly around each other. I like to think we are acting in a play, doing a complicated bit of choreography and hitting all our marks perfectly.
Sometimes when I’m in my bath I imagine I’m sitting on the waterfront on Kho-Phi-Phi Island or Miyako City, then I quickly flex my knees and pretend the resulting waves are a tsunami.
I once tried to commission Lalo Schifrin to write a theme song for my life a la “Theme From Mission: Impossible” but all he came up with was a mournful dirge in 9/4 time.
Or that I’m just being woken up from my cryo-chamber and getting ready to see the future.
I also do the “I’m playing host to some scientific figure from the past and showing them the modern world and how it developed from their contributions” bit while doing long driving trips alone. I think this habit helps a lot in my professional life – a lot of what I do is explain fairly complicated things to people who are smart and know the basics of some thing, but are suddenly required to make decisions beyond their current knowledge and need to be brought up to speed quickly.
Yeah, I agree that this fantasizing is normal, and probably a lot more common than you think. It’s generally when I’m (a) alone, and (b) doing some routine task that doesn’t require most of my attention.
If you don’t make up an occassion now and then to play the Mission Impossible music in your head to pretend as you go through a mundane task, well, you’re not my kind of people.
Now me, sometimes I do sound effects when I’m alone. Like, “choom, choom, choom” as I walk across the street, like I’m one of those big monsters about to go destroy a city. I also want to yell “pakow!!!” every time I kick a soccer ball, like I’m in an exaggerated sports cartoon (but I usually stop myself because other people are around).
I pretend I’ve got friends coming over by a certain time in order to get the housework done before they get there, after noticing how quickly I could pull it all together when that really was the case.
I pretend my garden is someone elses and I’m getting paid to do a really good job - not just mowing but raking and trimming. If it’s my lawn it’d be getting a cowboy mow!
Ever since I moved to Denver from the flatlands of the Midwest, I sometimes like to pretend I’m a pioneer, heading west in my covered wagon, and overcome with both the grandeur and the terror of the mountain passage looming before me, getting steadily larger and closer every day my wagon travels. It beats remembering I’m a 21st century commuter stuck in a traffic jam on my way to work!
I just set my clock in my bedroom 15 minutes fast when I was working , that gave me enough time to get out of the house in time. Of course you can never tell what the traffic will be like so I could end being late and having no control over it.
Yes, I do this, and on one occasion it was extremely helpful.
When I was a young woman, I had a phobia of flying. When I was about 40, it was necessary to fly with my husband to see if we wanted to move to Colorado for a job he was thinking of taking. I pretended to myself that I was an important, briefcase-carrying businesswoman who was completely jaded with flying because she spent so much time in the air. I tried to assume her persona as I boarded a plane for the first time and braved the takeoff. It worked.
It’s not as fun as some of your imaginings, but it finally got my butt on a plane.
Last year the husband and I were on vacation in Scotland and attended the Tattoo. On the way out they had Princes Street blocked off from traffic, but for some reason also didn’t want us walking on it. There was a cop out there reminding us pedestrians to use the sidewalk (pavement). I think he got bored with repeating that constantly because after we’d passed by we heard him say “The street is made of lava!” We cracked up so hard!
I too love my man predominantly because he makes me laugh, every single day, sometimes to the point of tears.