Inside-out Jammies

Sunday, as an early birthday gift, I was taken to hear the Delaware Symphony perform Bugs on Broadway. Many families went, bringing their kids who were free to bounce, hoot, and laugh without constantly being corrected. It was a rare treat for them, and for me as well, since I have to admit there are times at performances when I hear the random child cry and I think, "I'm with you, kid".



To the chagrin of Mrs. Chief, I'm not real big on the classical scene. I enjoy the music at times, but my enjoyment is in my emotional response and how the music serves as a springboard for my mind to wander. Perhaps that's due to being a visual artist, I don't know, but visual imagination is something that's very active in my mind and I think, in childhood, is active in everyone's mind. So I value the music for it's ability to launch me into the imaginative realm, to stir emotions and ideas. I don't analyze the particulars of a performance, I don't know the back stories of the composers or their thinking behind their compositions usually, but simply enjoy the experience if I can.

One of the things that kills the experience for me is the damn stuffiness. Why the formalities? Why must this experience be so regimented? Why must I sit still, dressed formally and wearing uncomfortable shoes and fearing not to have to sneeze or cough? Ridiculous. And then there's the tension in the air, from the performers who must not make a single mistake to the audience who, like lemmings, adhere to the formal protocols of attending a performance.

So for me, Bugs on Broadway was perfect. No tension, casual, relaxed, and for once the music was being celebrated and appreciated for its role as springboard and collaborative force for the imagination, this case being the many Merry Melodies from Warner Bros. That early childhood innocence, fun and wonder was rekindled and kicked into high gear for me, and it was a truly giddy experience.

Afterwards, we ran into a family outside and talking to their young daughter, I learned something. She told me that if you wear your jammies inside-out when it could snow, the next morning it'll have snowed so much that school will be closed. With my imagination already in overdrive and my excitement feverish, this "truth" was overwhelming! I told her I was in and we hopped up and down with glee. Bugs on Broadway AND a snow day? OMG!


So that evening I turned my jammies inside-out and urged Mrs. Chief to do the same, and I told the dog that we were going to have a super snowy play day the next day. Mrs. Chief was a doubter of course. It's March now and we haven't had snow all winter, despite the exaggerated warnings from the local weathermen. "That's why we're wearing our jammies inside-out" I said. "You'll see."


The next morning there was about 4" on the ground and more streaming down. Visibility was 0.2 miles and all the schools were closed. It worked! The inside-out jammies trick worked! Later I bundled up and ran through the snow with Elsa, reminding her, "see, I told you we'd have a snow day." Her inner snow dog came to the surface, running, rolling and sniffing in the snow as if tracking those moose and elks through the wintery forests of her ancestral lands of Norway and my inner child, having already been in the driver's seat since the day before, was reliving all those blizzardy days of early childhood in KC, building igloos and running as my face grew caked with snow.


The past two days were fun escapes from reality, indulgences in the unrestrained fun, excitement and imagination of childhood. I don't see any serious harm in such escapes, and certainly I don't see why one's imagination must be shelved along with other toys and trinkets of childhood. Indeed, I see all too often examples of people doing just that, shelving such thinking and behavior, thinking it unseemly and inappropriate now as an adult. I even see this at classical performances, where I think the audience (and perhaps many of the musicians, too) have lost that sense of excitement and wonder and are left as empty husks, as emotionless automatons. I do think that you can't completely shelve all that as childhood folly. It's always there, and attempts at denying and suppressing it are harmful and never completely successful.


I find this, too, with those who buy into irrational beliefs like religion, magic, astrology, and the like. I think attempting to suppress that desire to indulge in the fanciful as a childhood relic results in an adult perversion. Unable to reconcile their inner desires and their ideas of what behavior is expected of them as adults, they end up subscribing to these irrational beliefs as real. This strangely satisfies both drives, but as we know, it can be dangerous and have grave consequences. Too many sad tales of people harming or killing themselves or others because they couldn't separate fanciful indulgence from reality, or because they felt threatened that their indulgence was in jeopardy.


So I say allow yourself to enjoy a cartoon from time to time, relax at concerts, let loose in the snow and sometimes wear your jammies inside-out in hope of working magic. Indulge that imagination of yours and cultivate it. Doing so will enrich your life and make it so much more enjoyable, and hopefully remove the need for such perversions as having to hold irrational beliefs as real 24/7.