Carol was visiting with her five-year-old granddaughter who asked her, as she usually does, “Where’s Reid?”

   “He’s home,” Carol replied.

   “He stays home a lot,” the little one opined.

   Now, I know my way around five-year-olds enough to know the next time I see her, I’ll have to have a credible explanation for her as to why I prefer to be home so much. I know she thinks I’m playing with my toys, but I also know she won’t consider ebooks and Netflix toys. I’ll have to make stuff up, which five-year-olds are used to when dealing with me. I’ll have to be shrewd, though, as my credibility is already on thin ice from telling my own granddaughters that I am keeping dolphins in my bathtub as an inducement to get them to visit me again. They will, but I’m guessing they’re thinking it will be to some special home for the demented – or the annoying.

   The simple truth is I don’t at all feel I’m a stick in the mud being cooped up at home all day long. My mind wanders so much and so widely that I’m not even on this planet or in this solar system a good part of the time. Carol knows those blank stares aren’t stopping at the ceiling. She also knows that when my lips are moving silently, I’m arguing politics with some entity who may be either living or dead.

(Fictional characters offer the additional advantage of being able to just hit the remote when you’re tired of being around them. In one of my daydreams I’ve imagined inventing a remote that allows you to do that with real people.)

   The trick, of course, is to make it seem that all this daydreaming does amount to a full, rich and active lifestyle to a five-year-old. (I already know the adult in my life isn’t buying it.)

   We tell our children all the time that reading is an adventure, and I can surely make the case that I’ve been all over the world and have traveled back and forth in time with all the books I’ve read. (Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the 19th century trying to better understand the 21st.) And investing in the lives of so many characters in the Netflix series I’ve been watching is keeping me engaged with my fellow man. (Fictional characters offer the additional advantage of being able to just hit the remote when you’re tired of being around them. In one of my daydreams I’ve imagined inventing a remote that allows you to do that with real people.)

   You may have already discerned what I might have stumbled upon here. Think for a moment what it would mean to a five-year-old to tell her to find something to do in her room, while you do laundry, clean or prepare a meal, and that child becomes so absorbed in her daydreams that you forget she’s even home. No more running from gymnastics to dance to tee ball and soccer to keep your child occupied and out of trouble. They’ll be so absorbed in their pretend play, you’ll have to drag them out of their room to get them to dinner.

   You just have to be able to sell them on the dolphins in the bathtub and the rest will come easy.

Photo credit by Carol Madigan

---

Meet the Madigan Family; from the beginning