Perspectives - the Imagination of a Child

Rather than a full day of working on Son of the Shield, I spent most of today on a pirate expedition with my cousins, ages eleven and six. Bandanas, belts, and wooden swords made up our wardrobe. My brothers' camouflage face paint that they use for deer hunting made for some very dashing beards (on the boys, not me of course). A rocking chair/flower planter, an old cart wheel, a set of loading ramps, a log chain, and a basketball goal made up our ship. A cow's pelvic bone served as our figure head (The boys picked it out. I wanted the garden statue of the little boy and the dog.). A t-post driver and a basket of golf balls acted as our cannon and ammunition. We even ran a Union Jack up the mast (basketball goal) to confuse the British ships pursuing us. Over the course of the afternoon we successfully fought off the entire Portuguese armada, rode out a gale, summoned a kracken, and amassed a small mountain of treasure we dragged out of the scrap metal pile (Dad was thrilled).
Suffice it to say, I am thoroughly exhausted. But it's a good kind of exhausted. Sure, I didn't get to spend the day working on Son of the Shield, but I got to spend a great day with my cousins, and in the greater scheme of things, that's way more important (not to mention the fact that there can be nothing cuter than a 3-foot-tall Greenbeard using his 'Captain America powers' to fight off the Portuguese armada).
And anyway, I find it so unbelievably refreshing to watch children's imaginations at work. Sure, in reality it's a slap-dash conglomeration of random items from the lawn, garage, and junk pile, topped with a British flag. But in their eyes it's the Ranger, a tall, glorious pirate ship cutting through the open ocean under full sail. A person would be hard-pressed not to find that a refreshing perspective.