"Dream, Dream, Dream...I'm dreaming my life away."

Jon looked down from his perch high in the wild black cherry tree behind the house. He swayed in the breeze and gazed east, over the cabin roof down into the valley where the trestle spanned Jacob's Creek. The screen door slammed and Jon watched as Mom came into the back yard and gazed up at him, her hand screening her eyes from the August afternoon sun.

"Jon, come down, the school bus schedule is out and I need to talk to you about your class assignment."

Jon scrambled down the tree and ran down to the back porch in excitement. Third grade, and his first year at the new school--well, not quite, he had spent the last two weeks of second grade there. But now he would have a new teacher and Mrs. Weitzel would be behind him. Jon looked quizzically up at his mom, surprised to see the shadow of worry on her face.

"I'm sorry, Jonathan, but Mrs. Weitzel is teaching third grade this year and you are in her class."

At that moment Jon felt the summer collapse behind him. He looked with bewilderment into his mom's face and then ran past her into the house, down the hall to his room, slammed the door, and threw himself face down onto his bed. He heard the door open and felt his mom's hand on his back.

"Jonathan, it won't be that bad, it's a new school and third grade will be better."

But Jon knew it wouldn't be better --and it wasn't. Mrs. Weitzel still had the baseball bat in the corner near her desk--not that she ever used it--but it remained a stark reminder to every boy that he'd better watch himself in her room. Jon was so scared of Mrs. Weitzel that one day he forgot his math assignment and, afraid she would see him not passing his paper forward, he passed an empty paper up the row. Jon felt trapped--in a soulless room with nothing to do but watch the minute hand of the big clock on the wall creep so slowly towards three o'clock.

But then something happened. It was as if a wormhole opened and Jon was whisked into another universe. Well, maybe it didn't happen that abruptly, but daydreams that had before been only brief reveries became increasingly sophisticated escapes into a fantasy world Jon could control. And the daydreams became indispensable in getting him through the next eight years of schooling.

I remember third grade as the time when I first began building elaborate fantasies that helped get me from recess to lunch to recess and home. They also became very useful getting me through the many church services I had to sit through.

My daydreams became so enjoyable that I began using them in stories I would tell my older brother in the bed we shared each night. Often he would say, "Jon tell a story so we can fall asleep," and I would begin or continue telling some fantasy until we drifted off. When we get together as adults we occasionally say "Remember Nagahimo and His Army of Ants?" I don't remember that daydream but I always get a good emotional buzz thinking of how I felt when I was telling the story and its many sequels.