Electricity and Imagination

This last week we had my grandpa look at the electricity in our house. As I sat in the living room — with all of the lights seemingly flickering on and off of their own accord, the radio randomly turning itself on, the landline phone singing it's little chime to tell me that it was turned on, lights around me going off and going back on in a seemingly random manner — I realized that the electricity in my house had to be like a net. In my mind I imagined a central chord with a bunch of wires running off of it, like a tree. Now, I'm quite sure that this isn't actually how it works, but this is the mind of a writer, where everything can be transformed into a story. There were at least three possibilities, excluding the obvious of having the switches flipped. Option one: it was a tree and some sort of electrical squirrel was having a snack on a wire. Option two: the house is actually haunted, and the ghosts were having play time. Option 3: there were gnomes in the floor that were laughing maniacally while they unplugged all the little wires that connected to the outlets. Life is far more entertaining when imagination is a key factor. It's like wondering what's running through your pet's head, or wondering what toys do in an empty house. This is how stories are made. This is how books find a beginning. Those silly little wonderings or images that pop into your head that make you smile and laugh, even if they only last a few seconds, are worth every ounce of joy they bring simply because they're so outrageous. Who knows? Maybe next time there's a power outage in a storm I'll just have to create another story, since sometimes that's all you can do. But at least it makes the waiting entertaining, right?