The science filmstrip clicks to life. A little speaker plays busy blown out music. You try to keep your eyes open. You always fall asleep during these things.

Two children sit on their living room floor. Outside the rain beats against their window. The look dejected at the outside. And then sit on the couch pouting. Suddenly an anthropomorphic cartoon brain pops on the screen. It delights them with a little dance, then it regals them with a brass and friendly speech.

Imagination! It can make water flow uphill. It can make the sky harden and your food taste like candy. Imagination has the power to take you anywhere – daydreams, fantasy, fiction and delusion – all countries where your imagination toils.

But have you ever wondered where your imagination comes from. Does inspiration strike you from some far off land where every fancy is fact? Are your hopes birthed from the same malignant pregnancy as your nightmares? If you fell down the stairs and cracked your skull open would all sorts of little ideas crawl out and scamper around?

The answer to all of these questions and more is no. But that shouldn’t stop you from thinking them. Imagination has the power to make us question all sorts of things. Imagining something then refuting it is called the scientific method.

You see, Billy, man wasn’t given plans to go to the moon. First he had to imagine it. In 1902, 67 years before Neil Armstrong, Georges Méliès filmed men taking a rocket to the moon in one of the first motion pictures.

It may have taken decades but it’s pioneers of the mind that lead us to try to create new ways of doing things.

Tests have shown that imagination uses occipital, frontoparietal, posterior parietal, precuneus, and dorsolateral prefrontal regions of the brain. There’s very little you can’t do when you use that much of your brain is there?

What’s that, Wilma? Do dogs imagjne? Maybe a new meal or a fresh piece of meat, but probably not in the way that we do. Dogs forget where they are going halfway into a room often. They want nothing more than a good scratch behind the ears and to chase the neighborhood tomcat. Perhaps a dog imagines a really long flight of stairs he saw once, but not the way we do.

Take Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He invented the submarine. Without Jules imagination, the Germans would have never had the navy strength it used to kill thousands of good allies soldiers during World War II.

So be glad dogs can’t imagine or they might find some way to be our masters.

What’s that father? Imagination is for kids only? I can’t imagine Mother feels the same way.

Maybe try to do a little exploration yourself. You might find yourself in a new place before you fall asleep.

 The lights of the room are already on when you raise your head from your desk. You’ve drooled all over your arm and pencil again. You aren’t sure what part of the movie you dreamt and what part happened. Oh well. Imagination!