Lost in Thought on the Playground

I have always been a daydreamer, but never so much as when I was in elementary school. The world inside my mind was like another world, and I enjoyed exploring it when the world around me wasn't holding my attention.

I remember early in my elementary school career I was out on the playground during lunch time. In the corner of the playground was a vine growing through the fence that had grown so thick that it could support someone climbing up it. I climbed the vine and stretched out in the bend of it, balanced a few feet off the ground. Tuning out the screams of 200 children playing all around me I looked up at the sky. I was struck with how deep the blue was, and there were wispy clouds painted across the broad dome above me. Elevated off the ground as I was, and positioned on my back, I could not see the ground around me — only the sky. It was as if I was suspended in a world of pure blue. Then I imagined that the world was reversed, and I was falling off the planet and endlessly falling into the blue. I switched back and forth in my mind between these two orientations, and I observed how each one made me feel.

After a few moments I found this game a little disorienting and so I looked down to get my bearings. I was shocked to find that I was now all alone on the playground — it felt to me like everyone had disappeared in an instant. Now I was disoriented because I thought something paranormal had occurred. Of course what actually happened was that I had been transfixed by the sky for about 20 minutes and everyone had gone in for class. I came late to class and had no way to explain why I wasn't on time, other than that I was daydreaming and looking up at the sky. I could tell my teacher didn't want to buy my story, but I had nothing better to offer.

  close window