This morning, when I poured skuggly, slimy green water from my rainbucket into my flowerpots, the overwhelming sense of playing at life assaulted me. This sensation is nothing new. Those who knew me way back when can vouch for my perpetual citizenship in the land of make-believe. For much of my childhood, with an imagination fueled by repeated readings of the Little House books, I pretended to be a log cabin, prairie girl. Of course, that was fine and dandy for a little kid, but I pranced into adulthood with one foot still firmly planted in la-la land. To this day, my foot’s still there.
My first teaching job at Sky Ranch for Boys, a treatment facility for juvenile delinquents, should have yanked me free, but it didn’t. With several seasons of Welcome Back, Kotter under my belt and the repeated viewing of To Sir With Love during my formative years, I knew my recent college training and high ideals were just what a bunch of wayward adolescent boys riding on erratic waves of testosterone and illicit drugs needed to turn them around.
Boy, was I wrong. After two years in the classroom, my efforts hadn’t accomplish half as much as Sidney Poitier did in and hour and a half on the big screen. Before long, playing the part of a saintly, compassionate miracle working teacher became, well, hard work.
So I left that job and got a new one teaching country school in the little South Dakota town where we lived. My constant childhood rereadings of the Little House books and hours of playing school marm with my cousins as students had me convinced I knew everything there was to know about country schools, though my educational training never addressed the subject.
Boy, was I wrong. Teaching the kids the traditional subjects wasn’t the problem. The problem was teaching music, art, and PE – not a pretty sight. The job duties also included cleaning the school, making sure the bulls weren’t in the school yard before dismissing kids for the day, and pooper-scooping with a snow shovel after the bulls and the kids were gone.
So, how did I reconcile the lovely land of make-believe with the cruel, workaday world? I became a fiction writer. Three years ago when my mystery writing partner and I started writing a novel based on our experiences on the prairie. Working on the project is like total immersion in la-la land. We are allowed, even encouraged, to keep pretending as long as we keep writing, which could be a long time if the book gets published and turns into a series.
Of course, immersion in la-la land sometimes seeps into everyday life, which brings me back to watering my flowers with skuggly, slimy rainwater this morning. See, I know I’m just playing at being an eco-friendly, farm woman. And I know that someday, when the play becomes work, I’ll bail and cook up a new way to play.
The great thing about this immature propensity is that I don’t have to grow out of it. Because I’m a fiction writer, I get to call it research and do it some more. But enough talk about the land of make-believe. It’s time to get to work. Or play. Or work. To me, they’re one and the same.
