Not very long ago, I dined out with people at Bugaboo Creek. (For those unfamiliar, it’s one of those well-meaning theme restaurants which measures its level of atmosphere in terms of the number of fake antiques mounted on every available inch of wall space, except that some of them flop around and/or tell corny jokes.) Like a stake through its cruel 100% Black Angus heart, the kitchen had lanced my hamburger with this object:

Most of you would likely pluck out the frill pick (that’s what these are called; I looked it up) from your meal and discard it with barely a thought.

Me? I took a good look at this plastic widget and what popped into my head was this: That would make a great road sign for Hot Wheels.

If I were still a kid, I would have carefully stored this object in my pants pocket and smuggled it home. There it would have been attached with Scotch tape to a small, vaguely restaurant-shaped box — which conveniently means just about any box — and would thus become Bugaboo Creek, where this driver in his sparkle-blue 1967 Ford Mustang GT 500 and that racer in her cheetah-shaped “funny car” could relax together with a Bunyan Onion before moving along on the next leg of the Bedroom Floor Rally.

When one is a child, everything in one’s environment has some potential to provide unintended possibilities for play. Everyday objects whose shapes resemble something else become unwitting props. Countertops, coffee tables, and interesting rocks in the back yard become terrain, each holding a suggestion of new scenarios to be wrung out by the imagination. Later, as childhood is pushed aside by Sense, Reason and Maturity, our surroundings are robbed of their innate versatility, leaving us only with This Is A Coffee Table, That Is A Worthless Piece Of Plastic Standing Between Myself And My Hamburger, And That Is All That They Are.

I count myself lucky that I have not been abandoned by this virtue entirely. That’s not to say that I still play with Hot Wheels: I mean, I’m an adult now (and my mother threw them all out when I was a teenager). Most of the time I look at the world in very much the same utilitarian manner in which adults are supposed to. But every so often, even with my Serious Grown-up Mind, I look at a thing and catch a glimpse of its hidden fantasy purpose. This dingy old lampshade? A snowy volcanic mountain which some Lego men must scale to reach the lair of the Magma God who will grant their wish. This clear plastic tube that my very sensible new paper towel dispenser came in? A cursed glass monolith, in which any of my He-Man figures who tries to peer at its contents will become imprisoned, so that the others must break it down with their backs turned to free the unfortunate one. (After which He-Man and friends can head to Bugaboo Creek for a Bunyan Onion.)

Some may find this admission shameful, but I see it as a gift, useful both to the practice of writing fantasy and to the goal of never becoming too dull as my age advances. I hope that there are more of you than I suspect who have similarly retained this sense of whimsy with respect to your surroundings. If you haven’t, hopefully reading this will re-awaken some of those ideas which have long lain dormant.

Meanwhile, if you’ve still got one of those cheetah-shaped funny cars somewhere in your parents’ attic, I might know someone who would take it off your hands. There’s a newly opened Bugaboo Creek in the area and it wants road-weary patrons.