If You Think It— It Be REAL

 

Up until the age of seven or eight, I believed that if I thought something up in my imagination, it became real.

 

A fine example was The Mickey Mouse Affair. I was five years old when I told my best friend that I had a “real Mickey, round black ears and all.”

“Where?” she asked.

“He’s under my bed and only comes out at night after everyone goes to sleep.” I said.

My friend wanted one also. She told her parents, who then summoned me so I can admit I made it up. I insisted my Mickey was real.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know I had thought this up, or that I was embarrassed about fibbing and didn’t want to admit it. I knew I thought him, and also was convinced that now he was real.

 

Kids. This is part of the magical age.

 

Most people outgrow this, or channel it only into the creative arts. A sad and bad scenario for those who don’t grow up is when they apply this to politics.

 

Today, I use my imagination to write fiction, which, as far as I’m concerned, becomes real in its way.

©Carina Povarchik

CONTEMPLATIONS ON THE MEDIA

 

All last week, in our parched California, the news media (online, in print, and on the air) blared from every possible corner: RAIN IS COMING! (Triple exclamation, but I’ll stick with one.)

 

It’s a big deal, after two years of miserably low precipitation.

 

The day before many times a day the news stations wouldn’t stop talking about it. Even Queen Elizabeth’s funeral preparations made for small breaks in what really mattered—

RAIN IS COMING, and it’s going to be BIG RAIN.

Get your umbrellas out of the closet. Be careful on the roads. You’ll be awakened by possible thunderstorms. Stay inside and bake cookies on Sunday and be careful going to work on Monday.

 

I awoke early Sunday and looked outside. Not a drop. I checked in the back yard where I have a rain collector. Not a drop. It hadn’t so much as sprinkled overnight.

 

I went to the curb to put the garbage and recycling bins out for Monday’s collection. On the other side of the street, I saw a young man walking, holding an open umbrella over himself and wearing a raincoat. It was as dry as could be.

I wondered if it was just me or the world had lost its senses.

 

Many hours later, it did rain. It rained a little. Then the sun came out. Later, it rained once more. Also, just a little.

 

Monday came, and the sun was shining. The hourly news kept telling us not to be fooled. The sunshine could and would turn to showers at a moment’s notice.

It never did.

 

I was happy for the bit of rain. As I said, we needed it. It also meant I can skip a single yard watering, and every bit counts. But it made me think of how media lives to augment and distort reality. Not because they got a weather prediction wrong (this happens), but because even as reality outside said otherwise, the news kept insisting in real time that it was Noah’s flood.

 

I thought about the  raincoat-wearing man with the open umbrella who preferred to believe the news rather than his own eyes.

Many analogies, on the left and the right, popped into my mind. This is what occurred to me: it is immoral to live off intentional propelling of hysteria.

 

I made a note to self to always pay attention to what I am experiencing, and less to the hyperbolic tendencies of the media.

 

And when the next rain comes, I will say, “Welcome. Glad you’re here.” That, and no more.