Some Experience Required

The therapist my mother sends me to recently returned from his annual family vacation. This year he, his wife of sixteen years, and their twelve-year-old son elected to take a ten day cruise to Mexico. Aboard the ship, my therapist informs me, all earthly pleasure are gratis. Buffets are available at all hours; movies are screened in a variety of locations; games and dancing are arranged in yet other locations; pools are available at all times, despite the fact that all passengers are, in fact, floating amidst giant open seas; and, for the single or those less scrupulous married types, buffets of the carnal sort are also plentiful and unending. The therapist my mother sends me to gave me a knowing eyebrow lift at this last point of description. Unsure of what I was also supposed to know in regards to cruise line carnal buffets, I asked my therapist if he was one of those unscrupulous married types. He snorted and assured me that he was not. But, he insisted, I can imagine what he meant.

I am afraid that the therapist my mother sends me to believes I have an active imagination.

This fear extends beyond simply imagining the forgone temptations of extramarital affairs. For as much time as I spend watching the interactions of people, I have never been able to imagine with any clarity what these people are like when not in my immediate sight. Today, I saw a magnificent old man standing outside of a gas station. He wore terribly worn leather shoes, ones whose color had faded in the creases atop his feet where his toes begin. He wore old slacks, ones that he clearly patched himself along the cuff because the patches were threadbare and of a mismatched hue. Despite being summer, the old man wore a comfortable looking blue cardigan sweater, one with a hole torn in the lower right side. This hole was undoubtedly caused by the small, jumping dog at his side. I know very little about dogs and even less about their breeds. However, if Snoopy were a real dog but only longer in the body, I think it would have been fairly close to this old man's dog, Doodle. In truth, the dog's name was Yankee Doodle Dandy, but I would only learn that later on.

I had stopped into the gas station for a cheap rotisserie hot dog because it had occurred to me that I had never had one. As I walked out of the gas station, the old man was allowing Doodle to leave a small deposit of turd on the small patch of grass near the air/water station. The man had his back to the dog, speaking to it without turning to look directly at the dog, cooing, "Go on now, Doodle. Make your poopie."

The dog was evidently oblivious to the man's encouragements, only walking in slow circles about the grass. I watched the exchange with some interest. For one thing, I have never had a pet. My mother would never allow any sort of animal in the house. I had asked her once for a cat.

"Harold, please. Cats have a way of getting into everything. It is bad enough I have you snooping about without actually acquiring another pair of eyes."

I had asked her once for a bird. Nothing as elaborate as a parrot or cockatoo, only a small canary or pair of love birds.

"Have you any idea that birds chirp, Harold? They are not the silent beasts of beauty as they appear in tapestries. Could you imagine how badly you would feel with your birds chirping while Mother had one of her headaches? Can you imagine, Harold?"

Unfortunately, I could not. As I've said, I have never had a talent for imagination.

In any case, my never having had a pet has always caused me to take great pause in watching others interact with animals in a meaningful way. Another thing that made the relationship between the old man and Doodle so interesting was that the basis of their relationship appeared to be something of a life. The old man believed that he needed to coax his dog into doing its biological functions, that the dog needed him in some sense beyond the basic necessities of life, as if the dog needed him emotionally, psychologically. And, in return, Doodle seemed to regard the old man as little more than a great moving bumper, a thing that would block oncoming feet from encroaching on its space.

As I watched the old man talk and Doodle circle, Doodle took note of me. More accurately, I believe that Doodle took note of the hot dog I was eating. I would have never believed that such a small dog could have leapt as far as Doodle did if I had not been its landing pad. I lay flat out on the sidewalk, with the dog happily eating on my chest. Nearby, I heard a group of teenagers laughing at the predicament. The old man made his way over in a manner that suggested his dog was prone to such leaps and they were nothing to be overly concerned with. I lay motionless, waiting for the dog to finish its meal. His small metal name tag was shaped like an American flag. The name, proudly printed along one of the flag's long stripes, read: YANKEE DOODLE DANDY.

The old man approached and called his dog. Doodle, finished with the hot dog, sprung off my torso and returned to his master. The old man nodded an apology and began to walk his dog home.

Beyond this incident, I cannot imagine what this man and his dog are like. The therapist my mother sends me to asked me if I was upset that the man had not given me a more formal apology or, at the very least, a verbal one. I told him that I had been more scared of the dog than I had been outraged; I saw no reason why someone should apologize for my feeling scared. My therapist told me that, had he been in my place, he would have felt outraged for being accosted by a stranger's dog and would have felt an apology was in order. He asked me if I imagined that the old man let his dog jump on strangers all the time. It was then that I admitted to my therapist that I could not imagine the man beyond the circumstances I had seen him in. My therapist felt that I was being uncooperative. He asked me to imagine what sort of behaviors might be tolerated at home if jumping on strangers was tolerated in public. I told him that I had no way of imagining what life might be like for the old man.

I can imagine a simple, small house; in truth, I only picture the home of my father's deceased aunt. I can imagine a dirty apartment; in truth, I only picture an apartment I saw in a television show once. I can imagine a house of some size and grandeur; in truth, I only picture our home or the homes of one of my mother's friends. But, no matter how much detail I can pictures these locations, they are only memories of places, and I cannot imagine the old man and his dog into these settings. It is a thought experiment that I fail at, over and over.

The therapist my mother sends me to asked me if I thought I had been encouraged not to use my imagination in my childhood. I told him I felt that I had never learned how to use my imagination as a child. This answer seemed to vex my therapist for a moment, and I could see that he was deliberating how to proceed. He told me that the imagination was not something that one needed to be taught how to use, that the imagination was simply a faculty of the mind, one of the most fundamental faculties of the mind. In fact, he continued, I probably imagined things all the time and failed to recognize it. Any time I have daydreamed, problem-solved, planned for the future, even fantasized about death, all of these were instances in which I was imagining. That I felt I could not imagine things on command was merely a lack of confidence and practice.

I have been thinking a great deal about what my therapist said to me about imagination. For all that he assured me that I have been using my imagination all along, I am fairly certain that I have not. I cannot recall ever daydreaming. If I were ever given to moments of thoughtful reverie, mother would likely never have sent me to the therapist in the first place. Also, I have virtually no problem-solving skills. I admit this with a modicum of shame, but the truth is that mother has always solved problems before they became problems. Once I arrived at my therapist's office for my regular appointment, but had missed the phone message at home that my therapist was ill and could not make my appointment. This might have been a problem; indeed, later that afternoon, mother assured me that it would have been an incredible problem of logistics and timing to get me home. However, mother had intercepted the phone message on my behalf and sent a taxi to collect me as soon as I arrived at the office.

I've heard a great deal of talk about My Future from mother, the therapist she sends me to, her friends, family. Yet, in all this talk, I have never actually pictured that future in my mind's eye. I can no more imagine myself ten years older than I can make myself ten years younger. I can in no way imagine myself in any sort of profession, only because I have never had any sort of job or responsibility to speak of to date. What would I do? When would I wake in the morning? What sort of clothes would I wear? Would I have to wear my hair with a part? And would there also be cologne?

Can I imagine these possibilities? No. I can picture people I've seen in professions, getting ready for jobs, applying deodorant. I remember being a child and watching my uncle get ready for work in the morning. As a child, my uncle seemed to be the most powerful man in the world. He began by putting on a pair of boxer shorts, followed by well-pressed suit pants, navy blue. He would then put on a white undershirt before selecting a dress shirt. Most of his dress shirts had vertical stripes, all barely visible. He would tuck in his shirts and then select a belt. He had a mirrored cabinet filled with hundreds of small bottles of cologne and aftershave. Though he wore a different one every day, he always reached immediately and without hesitation into the cabinet and retrieve a bottle, as if he had a schedule of his scents and was merely playing it out each morning. I can see every step in his morning ritual, but can in no way replace his body for my own, his face with mine.

Even my interest in death is, so far as I'm concerned, completely unaided by imagination. If I was able to imagine the many ways in which death can interrupt a life, I would not need to enact them. Again, I feel that if I were truly able to use my imagination regarding my interest in death, mother would have never sent me to the therapist. For instance, when I enacted my drowning, I simply could not imagine the feeling of losing consciousness due to the inability to breathe. I had, of course, held my breath until losing consciousness before and could remember the sensation. However, that is different from drowning. When willfully holding one's breath, it becomes necessary to battle the will to breathe, to create a mantra of determination to hold out until the point of unconsciousness. But, in the case of drowning, there is no choice, no mantra. If one falters and decides to breathe, the lungs are only greeted by fluid. I could not imagine what that would feel like, at that moment when you might choose to forego the experience and not being able to. And, not being able to imagine it, I enacted it.

I will have to ask the therapist my mother sends me to whether or not, sometimes, fundamental things must be learned.