It was a mild day in the middle of the summer, not the type that glued your shirt to your back, but the type where the soft spoken wind whistled easy, breezy tunes if you weren’t too busy to listen. Me, being a kid, I was never busy. I had all the time in the world to listen to the music and watch snow white cotton candy like mythical creatures dance creatively and harmoniously.

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When our cable got turned off, that’s when I started watching the clouds. There was something the clouds had that Nickelodeon didn’t. You couldn’t feel the sun or breeze watching T.V. The sky was unpredictable. The clouds moved elegantly, so realistically, while T.V. was so fictional. Unpredictable is what I wanted life to be for me. I sat watching clouds twisting and turning, imagining artificial heroic moments that would make everybody want to be my friend. I remember daydreaming about what I’d do if an intruder came into our school and tried to attack my teacher. I pictured myself standing behind him, mocking a bulldog’s madness with a chair raised up high. I imagined that he wouldn’t pay much attention to me because I was just a kid. Then I’d swing the chair at his head as hard as 10 year old muscles could manage, which in my imagination was stronger than Superman himself

There was no limit to the possibilities. I could be climbing the highest mountain or taking a hiking trail through hell. It was like reading a book without reading. I created a story of my own, a gift to myself, as I explored, journeyed, without walking. The clouds and sun brought out the card board colored squirrels, sweet sounding birds, bright red roses, fresh blue rain, and everything beautiful. They taught me imagination, revealed creativity and were the keys to opening my mind. Without the sky, clouds and sun, there’d be no valleys of fresh trees or an eternal green Earth, just as without imagination, there would be no dreams to be followed, no goals to be set, no success to be achieved, no ambition to strive for and no life to live . . . what would I be without the sky?