Jennifer Brown

Saturday, in our quest to find a new barbeque grill, we visited a local hardware store. One of those Mom and Pop places -- no bells, no whistles, no stacks of crates towering above our heads menacingly. Just tools and a few household items, cleaning supplies, paint samples.

And a parrot.

We heard the parrot while we were browsing in the front of the store, and after a spirited debate over whether what we heard was the front door opening or a Jurassic Park-style experiment going on in a mysterious lab in a back room, the boys and I went in search of the squawking. We found it in the back corner of the store, a bird hopping around on the outside of its open cage, a dog crate on the floor next to it, housing a wide-eyed and curious Boston Terrier.

"Hello," the parrot squawked. The boys were thrilled. We stood in front of that cage for 20 minutes, the parrot talking its fool head off: Hello! I'm all right! Polly want a cracker (yes it actually said, "Polly want a cracker," which I found hilariously cliche!)? Yeah.

After a while, The Destroyer, excited about seeing his first real-life talking animal, crouched down, peered into the dog crate and said to the Boston inside: "Do you speak, too?"

Later, he told me the dog snuffled, which he took to mean, "Yes, but only secretly."

Aaaah, imagination.

Later that day I took my overexciteable boxer out for a little game of Frisbee (AKA: a little game of Ick-I-Don't-Wanna-Touch-that-Slobbery-Thing!). After just a few tosses, my mind started to wander. I thought about the parrot and about The Destroyer's insistence that if a bird could talk, well then why not a dog, too?

It occurred to me that imagination is a lot like the Frisbee I was repeatedly tossing. I could flick my wrist and it would fly one way. Fling my whole arm and it would fly another. Change the trajectory of my throw and it would shoot into the air sideways and almost come right back to me. Sometimes I had no control over where it would fly; I would mean for it it fly one way and it would end up on the opposite side of the yard. Just like imagination, no two throws were alike. And just like imagination, every time the Frisbee came back to me, it was changed. Manipulated by the last throw, the last catch, the last wallow in the dirt. Changed by the recipient. A few more specks of dirt stuck in the boxer spit bubbles. A few new teeth marks. A piece of grass missing. Another one replacing it. A whole new Frisbee for me to send a-flying, time and time again.

And, just like imagination, every time I tossed it out there, I had a hope for it. I wanted it to be received, enjoyed, played with. Sometimes the dog would go for it; other times he'd get distracted by commotion elsewhere in the neighborhood and it would fall flat and I'd have to trudge over and pick it up myself, try again. Still others, he would snatch it up and run off with it, mauling it in a corner. Or catch it in mid-air, too eager to wait for it to land. And others -- the best times -- he'd bring it right back to me.

"More! More!" I could almost hear him chanting.

If, that is, dogs could talk.

You know, like parrots.