Creative Writing: "We Could Pretend"

This piece was originally written for 'Folk Tales', which is broadcast 3-4pm every Sunday on LSRfm and is hosted by the wonderful Charlie. It was inspired by Ruth Moody's "We Could Pretend", and though it was inspired by the title only, but I urge to listen to the song as well, because it is beautiful. 
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When we were kids, we could pretend. We could pretend for hours and we would never get bored or tired. We could pretend for hours, shunning food and water, our appetites satisfied and our thirst quenched by the sparks in our own synapses as we quested for make-believe adventure. We could pretend for hours and hours and hours and our imaginations, our wonderful, youthful, vibrant imaginations would never fail us, never let us down.

What could we pretend today? Let’s pretend, yeah… let’s pretend we’re astronauts! Yeah, and we’ve got this huge spaceship with a thousand rocket blasters on the back, shooting us through space, past the moon and the planets and far out into the starts. We’ll whirl past Jupiter and Saturn, dodging asteroids and clouds of mysterious space dust and we’ll wave to the tiny blue men who live on Pluto who eat nothing but ice cream because it’s so cold there. We’ll stop for tea with them maybe, and tell them about our little blue planet far away full of lush green plant life and bustling cities and thunderous seas, and they’ll tell us about the Plutonian ice mines deep underground with walls that are as smooth as glass and that sparkle like diamonds…

Or we could pretend, right… we could pretend we’re pirates! Vicious, blood-thirsty pirates, wielding cutlasses and touting pistols, feared throughout the Spanish Main! We’ll be captains of our own vessel and it’ll be the fastest ship on the entire ocean, with rows and rows of cannons and a polished mahogany wheel at the helm and a fierce carved dragon leading the way as we plough through the water. We’ll raid merchant ships, stealing their gold and their silver and stuffing our hold with swag. If anyone is fool enough to attack us we’ll show them no mercy, running them through with our blades or slitting their throats and taking their ships for our own. We’ll be on the most wanted list in every port, constantly evading capture by the skin of our teeth, and at night we’ll sit on deck and reminisce about our last daring escape, swigging rum from the bottle and laughing so our gold teeth glint in the moonlight…

Or how about we pretend… no, listen! How about we pretend that we’re explorers? Yeah, yeah, explorers, hacking our way through the jungle in search of a legendary tomb that has been lost for over two thousand years, and that is said to be cursed... We’ll carry guns slung across our shoulders and knives at our sides to protect ourselves against the dangers that may befall us, such the poisonous snakes disguised as vines that hang precariously from the jungle canopy, or the spiders the size of dinner plates that hide, poised to strike, in the undergrowth. A tiger will emerge suddenly on the path ahead; a fierce, snarling tiger, its beautiful orange and midnight fur speckled with drops of blood from its last kill, and we’ll run, faster than we even knew we could run, stumbling over roots and rocks until suddenly we’re falling, falling down into darkness… We’ll land with a jolt that knocks their air from our lungs, not on cold earth but on cold stone – we’ve found the tomb! We’ll prize open the ancient door, coughing as dust millennia old finds its way to our throats, and peer deep, deep into the darkness beyond…

When we were kids, we could pretend a million and one things, for a million and one reasons: because we were bored, or afraid, lonely or in pain, for fun or to escape the real world. Our imaginations would never cease to create new scenarios in which to immerse ourselves and every Saturday afternoon saw the birth of a new favourite game, games that always begin with the words “let’s pretend…” But as we slowly slip into adulthood, into rental agreements and nine-to-fives and coffee, as responsibility settles on our shoulders, at first like butterflies but then like bricks, we discover we can no longer pretend. We can no longer retreat back into that shining world behind our eyes where we’re heroes and where we could control our own destiny. Imagination, our childhood protector, saving us always from tedium or anguish, is gone, leaving reality, a brutal, unrelenting force as a poor replacement. And throughout every test of reality - a bounced cheque, a lost loved-one, another broken heart – we can’t even count on our own minds to wrap us in the comforting blanket of make-believe and, for just a couple of hours, make everything ok. Some say this makes us stronger, better people, that pretending never helped anyone, that action is better than words and that memories and other substance-less imaginings are a waste of valuable time, are childish and nonsensical…

But is it so wrong to cherish those substance-less imaginings, those memories of when the line between reality and pretence was precariously thin and when we used to dance, laughing, along its edge? Is it so wrong to want, occasionally, to be childish? To want to forget in times of sorrow, to be a hero for a little while? No, it is not. It is natural regret that we can no longer be a pirates or a spacemen or a cowboys or any number of fantastical things. It is understandable to mourn for our deceased imagination that means we must always be an adults and boring, accepting this one existence that is sadly lacking in mysticism and excitement. Our imagination has poured away through our fingers along with the sands of time, and it is a shame, a terrible, terrible waste. We miss it, always, and look on jealously at those still youthful enough to be able to construct another, more brilliant reality for themselves, a new reality every day. And, most of all, at those moments in life where we want to escape, when we feel suffocated by our surroundings or when the pain is too much to bear, we wish with all our hearts, that as adults we, too, could create a new reality. That we, too, could pretend…