Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/dw4TbsBgOJs
or read his tale below…
THE BOY WHO ALWAYS KNEW WHAT HE WANTED TO BE
Lenny is chasing Jimbo in circles down on 15th Street, in sight of two bemused policemen who are chatting inside their parked patrol car. The officers listen for radio instructions as to what they should do next during this Saturday evening shift. Jimbo and Lenny are just having fun, all excited that they are playing close to their uniformed heroes.
All Jimbo can think is, “Maybe the policemen will see how fast and nimble I am. Maybe they will call me over and recommend that I attend police academy when I grow up, since I obviously have what it takes to do their job.”
The officers eventually shut driver and passenger doors and cruise on up 15th toward their next assignment. Jimbo and Lenny go on playing till it’s dark and their mamas start calling them for supper.
After supping, then doing his chores, Jimbo sits alone atop the front steps of his home, thinking about being a policeman. Or maybe an astronomer.
He gazes up at the darkened sky and tries to count stars and planets, and thinks, “Maybe I can become an astronomer. Yeah, that’s it—I can calculate the heavens for a living.” He tallies his talents, “Well, I’m smart. I read astronomy books. I even own a star chart. I know the names of lots of constellations. What else is required?”
Law enforcement fades away in his mind as Jimbo contemplates comets and meteors and novae.
Next day, neighbor Lenny and gang show up to play softball in the vacant lot across the street. One kid has a chipped wooden bat, another produces a frayed ball, and among them there are at least two old mitts to share.
Since nobody is trained or little-leagued yet, the tattered players kind of make up their own rules as the game progresses. Jimbo suddenly has the idea that he could maybe become a famous baseball player. Lenny underhands the ball, Jimbo hits it hard, and there’s a sudden CRACK! as it hits the asbestos shingles on the side of a nearby house. The owner is not amused and exits her back door to dress down the delinquents-to-be.
Jimbo realizes that maybe sports is not his thing, unless of course he can be a celebrity who is beyond criticism.
After seeing the new film, Destination Moon, Jimbo is so excited about becoming a space man that he rushes home and creates an entire comic strip based on the story. He considers his options.
After much contemplation and consternation, Jimbo makes a list and checks it twice.
1. No way I’ll ever be brave enough to be a policeman. Heroes of the movies know how to dodge bullets, but with my luck…
2. Being a sports hero would require effort and athleticism. Jimbo is smart enough to know he’s not into physical strength and endurance.
3. Jimbo learns after a bit of study that astronomy would entail being a natural math and physics wizard. He still has trouble with his math tables. Cross that off the list.
4. Being a spaceman might mean becoming an obsessive scholar and trainer and explorer. Jimbo has explored the red-clay ditch down the road from his home and found it to be buggy and snakey and kind of scary.
Eventually, after years scratching potential careers off his list, Jimbo grows older, maybe wiser, and falls into what he actually CAN do, as opposed to what he wishes he could do.
Jimbo owns the fact that he is dreamer. What things can a dreamer do?
Looking back, he comes to understand that dreamers can write poems and books, dreamers can tell stories, dreamers can entertain and read books. Dreamers can even find a way to make a living being around the engines of his dreams day and night—the engines called books.
These days, Jimbo ekes out a living by returning to his default setting. He now knows that dreamers can experience all the careers you can possibly imagine…just by dreaming about them, writing them, telling them, selling other dreamers’ dreams in his bookstore.
Jimbo gets to live a thousand different lives and still make it home in time for supper and moment by moment security in his home that is fifty miles away from his original front steps.
His special secret is the sure knowledge that instantly, at will, he can still sit on that 15th Street stoop and imagine the stars in a universe that is contained safely within his dreaming mind
© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
www.redclaydiary.com