I am always thinking. I think of my family, my friends, my dogs, the chooks, quilting, God, what to fix for dinner, our vacations, our next project, the laundry, and my day ahead and that is just in the first ten minutes after I wake up.
One day David was sitting in his recliner just looking ahead and I asked him what he was thinking. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing?!” I said. “How can you not be thinking of anything?” “I just do,” he said.
Well, I couldn’t imagine not thinking about anything at all because I always have something on my mind, am planning something or imagining something, so I didn’t understand it.
Last week at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago there was an experiment you could try where two people sat opposite each other with sensor bands around their heads. They were told to try not to think of anything. There was a ball placed on the table in front of them and the ball would move toward the person who was thinking the most. David and I tried it. We had barely got started when the ball zoomed toward me. The man running the experiment said he had never seen that happen so fast. Screens in front of us had indicated the movement of our thoughts and David’s hardly moved. What? I know he has a brain and is smart. How did he do that? David told me it was really all about relaxation of the muscles in your head and he just sat back and relaxed while I was trying my best not to think of anything. Our grandson and granddaughter tried it and almost got the same results. Like grandfather, like grandson, I guess.
I have tried not to think of things. You know when someone tells you not to think of something and that’s all you think about? Kind of like one time when I was going to a parent-teacher conference and my son told me not to look at the big mole that was in the center of the teacher’s forehead. It was all I could look at. I couldn’t help myself. Or a friend tells me something in church not to notice or laugh and that is exactly what I do.
I have always had a huge imagination. I can zone out by thinking about something so intensely that when David walks into the room and speaks to me I jump. He tries coming in softly and whispering, but I jump even higher.
When I was a child, I was always making up stories in my head. I had a whole family I thought about. They were horse people and everyone rode horses and entered contests. The boy’s name in my story was Thad. Even now, when I can’t sleep I make up stories in my head. One is where I live in a little town out west. My father, who is a widower, is a store keeper and I help him run it. He trades furs with the Indians. A very handsome Indian comes in one day and for days afterward. He wears only a breechcloth and a headband around his long, silky black hair. He just stands in a corner of the store by the pot belly stove and stares at me. I tell my father and he says he’s harmless. He makes me uncomfortable. One evening while I am walking to church for choir practice where my fiance , Joshua is waiting for me, I am captured by this Indian and taken back to his tribe far from the town to be made his wife and become an Indian princess. Meanwhile, Joshua and my father are looking for me and I am afraid if they find me the Indians will kill them. Years go by and I am married to this Indian and have a child and finally Joshua finds me. But by then I am in love with my Indian husband and don’t want to leave the tribe. Heartbroken, Joshua leaves me and I never see him again. Okay, I think this would make a great book. Meanwhile, David is sound asleep beside me oblivious to my imaginations.
I think I like to write so that I can get all this stuff out of my head before it bursts. Does your mind keep busy all the time? I can’t even sleep without having the most awesome, colorful dreams. My brain is hotwired I guess so I will just go with it and continue to write and think.
What do you think? Bye.
