Turkey Season
In elementary school, as a lead up to Thanksgiving, we drew turkeys by tracing our hands. A little thumb makes an excellent head from which to hang a wattle, and skinny fingers form a fabulous feather fan with just a smidge of imagination and a Crayola box of 64. My turkeys’ feathers were always elaborate, with bands of brightly contrasting color in shapes and designs more like the rick rack in my granny’s sewing box than the tail of a bird you’d find in a field. But I don’t guess I’d really ever seen one in real life at that age. I just designed what I thought it might look like. Or hoped that it could or would. That’s the beauty of not really knowing. You can make it look like whatever you want.
My turkeys’ feathers were always elaborate, with bands of brightly contrasting color in shapes and designs more like the rick rack in my granny’s sewing box than the tail of a bird you’d find in a field.
We know so much these days. (Or at least we think we do.) About so many different kinds of things. Information is literally at our fingertips at all times of the day or night. It’s amazing, really. We can learn how to hang a sweater or grow a pumpkin or we can find out what the temperature is in Perth, Australia if we’re simply inclined to look. We don’t have to wonder what a turkey looks like. We can just google it on our smart phone and see. And I can say without reservation, if there had been such a thing as a personal computer when I was 7, I would have definitely used a lot less aqua blue.
That’s the good/bad line of all access information. It gets rid of the don’t know spaces where imagination lives.
Imagination is more important than knowledge, at least that’s what Albert Einstein said. And if anyone should know, I think it’s probably him. Imagination is how art gets made, and how gardens get planted, and houses get designed, and how rocket ships get built that take people to the moon. It’s also how problems get solved. And hope gets restored. And progress is made. Information might be the boots we wear to work in, but imagination is the blood flow that makes us move our feet. Without it we’re just robots with an expiration date.
Imagination made Ervin Johnson, Magic. Number 32 did things with a basketball no one had ever seen before. He passed between his legs and behind his head and while spinning in the air with his tongue hanging out. He splattered paint on an already beautiful picture and took the game that Naismith invented to a whole other place and time. Magic was Picasso with an orange leather ball in his hand. Physically, he was gifted, but what he saw within the game was what made him who he was. Imagination was his forte and he rode it like a crazy kid on a mechanical bull. His willingness to follow his mind’s eye forever changed the game.
And the mind’s eye doesn’t develop inside of a box full of constantly streaming answers to all the questions on the test. Imagination needs blanks to fill that don’t have words to choose from, and space in which to grow. It needs room. And time. And quiet. Things that are, unfortunately, really hard to come by in the information inundation that rains down on us all the time. In the middle of “I don’t know” is where imagination gets to grow. The wide open spaces are where Bubba Watson’s toe putt came from and where Roger Federer learned to slice the ball in such a way that it spins back to his side of the net. Innovation, creativity, —the answers to questions that don’t have easy answers—they live in the free range of our minds. And we find them by running and playing and flexing. By not being afraid to just mess around.
The everyday kind of imagination that is built by constant wondering is always in incalculable need. We can’t afford to be without it. Not ever, really, but especially not now. Information is power, without question. It helps us identify gaps and holes. It helps us learn and grow and be better. It makes us more efficient and helps us understand. But it can also predispose our thinking. And it can squash ideas and possibilities before they can even become a thing. With no need to dig or wrestle, why would we bother to wonder? Imagination is a muscle, and we lose muscles we don’t use.
For the past year and half, I’ve walked a 3 mile course every day through my neighborhood. A course that begins with going down my driveway to the street and turning left. It’s a trek I make to think and breathe and see and feel and sometimes I get back to where I started without even realizing where I’ve been. Mostly though, I pay a lot of attention to the birds and the trees and the flowers and our great big, wonderful world. I look hard at what’s around me as I walk. One day last week, though, when I got to the edge of the driveway, I went right. For absolutely no reason I can think of, I just turned right. It’s just where my feet decided to go. And I fell completely out of a box I didn’t even know I was in. I walked the entire route in reverse—and in wonder--everything on the time worn path looked different and strange and new. It was almost as if I was in a place that I had never been. It felt like my world had a pull -out page, a surprise extrapolation that I’d simply not realized I could unfold.
Seeing old things with new eyes is an imagination trigger. It’s like hitting refresh on the upper left corner of our computer screen. My reverse walk made me remember to keep taking the lid off the box.
I jogged upon a Tom during the global shutdown—that period during Covid when the animals got their swagger back—and I was stunned by the regal, intricate pattern of his fan.
Turkeys are out and about all the time in east Norman where the hills and the fields give them room to roam. Those of us who live out this way know where to slow on the main road for their crossing pattern, and we hear their gobbles in the distance when they gather up to chat. I jogged upon a Tom during the global shutdown—that period during Covid when the animals got their swagger back—and I was stunned by the regal, intricate pattern of his fan. It did look like rick rack on his feathers! I was closer than I knew. But I’m grateful that I didn’t. Imagination was the prize.
Sherri Coale
P. S. Top Ten Children’s Books That Aren’t Just For Children