Imagine what I saw.....or could see!

 Today I picked out an old classic, a book I remember reading to Abhay long ago. (with kids literally growing each day….two years can feel like a long time!) Anyway, on browsing through my blog archives, I realized that I had almost committed sacrilege – over 160 posts featuring various picture books and not one by Dr. Seuss!! Frankly, Abhay has never been a great fan of books like One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish or Green Eggs and Ham or Fox in Socks and other Dr. Seuss books.  But what struck a chord with him was the first book by Dr. Seuss titled “And to Think That I saw it on Mulberry Street” and he seemed to like it even more now probably because of the easily relatable character called Marco, a boy who has a mind of his own….not surprising for me! 

On the way back from school, Marco remembers his father’s advice to keep his eyes and ears wide open for interesting things and sights on the street. In fact, he takes this advice a little too far. As he walks long Mulberry Street, he spots a wagon drawn by a horse and imagines this everyday sight turning into a marvelous spectacle so that he’ll have a story to tell…a story no one can beat!! So instead of a horse, he imagines a zebra pulling the wagon only to realize that a wagon is too commonplace for an exotic animal like a zebra  and it would be much more compelling to have the zebra pull a chariot instead…and so he goes on from a zebra and a chariot to a reindeer and a sleigh which according to him seems only too predictable. So he imagines the sleigh being drawn by an elephant with bejeweled Rajah perched on top! Suddenly he feels that the sleigh doesn’t match up to the elephant in its grandeur and the sleigh is transformed into a brass playing band along with a man on a trailer playing audience to the band;s performance! Now to assist the elephant pull the heavy load, he decides to have two giraffes act as helpers,  with the police clearing the road of traffic! It is only fair to have the city mayor inaugurate such a grand event with airplanes dumping confetti from the sky and so his imagination runs wild and as he runs home from school all along Mulberry Street. Finally when his father asks him what he saw, what does he say – “Nothing but a horse and a wagon on Mulberry Street”! Kids' imagination.....we parents just don't get it...right?:-)