I spent large amounts of my childhood in our basement setting up wars with dozens of action figures, having Royal Rumble matches between Ninja Turtles and G.I.Joes, and draw battleships and superheroes for hours and hours and hours.
Sometimes my overactive imagination would cause me (and sometimes still does) to exaggerate things to the point of believing them.
Case in point, in 1993 there was a WWF event where on an aircraft carrier, on the Monday after 4th of July, where every wrestler tried to body slam the Japanese (actually Samoan) sumo wrestler, Yokozuna. No one had even knocked Yokozuna off his feet yet, let alone body slam him. (I'm not joking, watch the video below)
After Lex Lugar managed to be the first person ever to body slam Yokozuna, Lugar got a huge American push in the wrestling world the size of which we hadn't seen since 1980's Hulk Hogan.
So he started traveling the country in the "Lex Express." The most patriotic tour bus ever created.
Every week on the wrestling show, they would show where the Lex Express was and show Lugar high-fiving American kids in each city. I dreamed to seeing the bus and getting to meet Lugar.
It was maybe a few months into his American tour when I saw an awesome silver tour bus drive by on the local highway, 367. I started connecting dots thinking, "Well the bus sort of looked like it." Which turned into, "WWF comes to St. Louis a lot, that was probably his bus." By the time I got home I had convinced myself that it was the Lex Express and went home to report this to my dad.
I believed this to be true until probably 10 years ago when I started thinking about it and realized there was never a reason why Lex Lugar would have to drive down 367 for any reason ever. And this childhood memory was vastly changed 20 years later.
I had adults tell me I would grow out of my imagination. I wish I could remember who told me that because I'd love to show them that I still have the imagination of an 8 year old.
The past two months I've been re-reading Harry Potter as I fall asleep. This obviously puts thoughts of witches and wizards and trolls and goblins in my brain. Guess what? 90% of the time I have a vivid dream of Harry and I on Auror Adventures. I wake up trying to think of who's child I can borrow so that I have a reason to go to the Harry Potter theme park at Universal Studios.
So I'm at the part in the story where Hagrid is trying to recruit the giants and it woke this exaggeration memory deep inside me.
My class was going to take a field trip to see the Alton giant statue and home.
My teacher said, "We're going to have lunch at the feet of the statue."
Now at this point, my only introduction to giants was Paul Bunyan. Every Paul Bunyan book showed him and his ox towering above forests and crushing trees as they walked. That is what I imagined all giants were like.
So mind kicked into high gear. I pictured this nice park in a small town center, bright green trees all around, and a 150 foot statue that we would literally be able to climb onto the feet of and have lunch.
Boy was I disappointed when I could barely see the 9ft tall statue over some classmates heads.
Imaginations are fun.
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