Can we learn anything about fiction from balloon animals?

Think back. When you were a kid, was there some driving feature of your life, something that you see under-girding everything you did, or everything you were/are? Let me give you an example.

Don't Cry

When I was in elementary school, I had to get a variety of physicals, just like every other kid. That meant shots, and just like every kid, I hated shots. They made me cry. Like most mothers, mine was motivated to keep me from crying too much, so she made me a deal I've since learned is fairly common. If I didn't cry, I'd get a prize. In this case, she offered to take me to the grocery store toy aisle and let me pick out a toy. Neat.

I managed to cringe through the shot within the tolerance level and found myself in the toy aisle at the store. It was no Toys 'R Us, to be sure, but there was a decent variety. I picked a bag full of balloons for making balloon animals. I rushed home, rubbing my bandaided arm enthusiastically, and looking at the bag, at the long, colorful balloons within, imagining all the marvelous creations that lay before me.

I got home and rushed into my room, tearing at the plastic of the bag as I went. I pulled out a green one. It was limp and a little sticky. I put my lips to the end. I blew. Oh, I blew. And blew. And nothing happened.

I tried again. I tried a different balloon. My mom tried. My dad and siblings tried. Nothing happened. No balloon animals. Apparently, balloon animal balloons are incredibly hard to inflate. Most people use a machine. Maybe I should have known this, but I'd never actually seen a balloon animal before. The lifeless things sat in a box under my bed for a long time, like bodies waiting for ghosts. Eventually I threw them away.

Recently, I was telling this story to some friends and realized it was the perfect example of that feature which defined my childhood (and probably my adult life as well). I was always trying to stretch reality to match my imagination. I didn't care if balloon animals were hard to inflate. I didn't care if I knew nothing about making balloon animals. I saw the bag, my imagination created for me a scenario of rubbery dragons and wolves and heroes, and so I got them. It's as simple as that.

Ride the Lightning

You could find this same tendency in the execution of my Halloween costumes. Every year, I went into the season overflowing with intricate and incredible plans for my costume and every year, I looked like a moron. (But you can see the remnant of this in my love of cosplay now. I still have the ideas, but now I have the resources and abilities to at least pay them lip service, more or less.) Nor were my efforts to match reality and imagination always healthy. Once, while playing with my G. I. Joes, I decided that what I really needed was a bolt of lightning. Confident in my ability to create such a bolt, I stood and shoved a bobby pin into the electrical socket. My brother said he heard a zap and a thud and looked up to find me twitching on the floor.

Find Meaning

This isn't therapy, at least not entirely. I'm not writing this to exorcise any demons and I don't need a couch to lie on. But the point of this whole thing (I mean this whole site) is to explore creativity, including fiction, to dig into it and find out what it is, and to tease out something about its relationship to us.  We can't really do that unless we start to explore ourselves.

One definition of fiction could be this: a meaningful adaptation of reality. Not an adaption that gives meaning to reality (though maybe it is). An adaptation of reality that's full of meaning on its own, independent of it's relation to the so-called real world. That meaning adds to the real world, but only if we know where to look for it. I think the place to start is by understanding those features of our personality that sit at the base of our reality. I have an imaginative life that's out of sync with the real world and the journey of my life has been the effort to reconcile those two. If we're going to invite the meaning of fiction into our lives and let it change us, we may need to understand the lives into which we're offering the invitations. Whether or not we're the authors, when we consume fiction, we're always the creators, if only of the meaning, and I think it's helpful to understand the mechanism of that creation.

Also, don't stick bobby pins into electrical sockets.