The Tiger and the Little Body Mechanics

The World of Imagination…
The Home of Day Dreams…
La La Land.

There are two things that come to mind defining the ‘beginning’ of these sojourns that would, in essence, become a soundtrack to the rest of my life. I would like to be able to say that one of them was THE one, the christening as it were, but I cannot honestly recall which came first.

What seems to strike me as the strongest of the two instances occurred outside my childhood home in upstate New York. I must have been…oh, five or six, maybe. Perhaps younger. You know how all those formative years can sometimes mush together. I remember distinctly that I did NOT want to go inside, and that could have been for any number of reasons.

So this left me OUTSIDE, for most of the afternoon. Bored to tears. Sitting on the front steps of the house and looking around, wondering what I should do with myself. I don’t think I had a bike yet, and my brother was probably inside, too young to play with. No Gameboy Advanced. Just me, adrift in the world of the front yard.

I know I used to talk to myself, as though there were several people in my head, almost constantly. (Could I have been channeling someone? What a pleasant thought…) And rich though the conversations would be, even this sometimes did not suffice—not just the talking. I had a peculiar feeling that there was another level to this ‘make believe’ stuff.

A dark and shady area caught my roving eye. It was the middle of summer, the sun was high, and this dark place looked cool and inviting to me. It was one of those patches of lawn that got cut only once or twice a year, because it was situated in a spot that was not easily reached via mower, and this was, of course, back when weed eaters were not a common household item, if they’d been invented at all. We’re talking early seventies, here. Color TV’s were just becoming ALL the rage.

So the grass was thick and high, almost to my waist, flopping over onto itself. The little thicket went all the way back behind the house, crowded on one side by a heavy overgrowth of bushes, and on the other side, the foundation of the house supported it.

I knelt down and peered into the shadowy depths. My father was a hunter, and had caught many animals, killing most of them except for some raccoons that he trained the dogs with. I’d seen squirrels, rabbits, deer, all manner of dogs and cats… I was already well versed in the world of creatures, and the thought of one lurking in the grass did not bother me in the least.

Pushing into the depths, I started to gently create a tunnel, actually weaving the grass together at the top to secure the ‘roof’. I kept my eye out for any angry bugs, but soon did not care at all about anything other than immersing myself in my den.

There was a tiger in there, I was sure of it. I could hear her growling, panting from the heat of the day. Once I’d tunneled back to a depth that allowed only the bottoms of my shoes to remain in the cut part of the lawn, I could see her bright yellow-green eyes in the shadows. She did not frighten me, nor did I believe she wanted to hurt me in any way.

Seeing me, looking into my eyes and watching my hands weaving their way back into the dark earthy depths of the grass, she knew I was there to keep her company, that I was cub come to share her den with her.



I tunneled so far back into that thicket of grass that when my mom came out to look for me, she couldn’t find me for several minutes. I let her call for me, savoring my great hiding place, knowing that, for those few seconds before guilt would overwhelm me and I would poke my head out and answer her, I was blissfully IN my little world, one that I had created myself and shared with my tigress.

For me, it was the first little toehold in La La Land. Every chance I got, I retired to the tiger’s den that summer, luxuriating in the absolute safeness of it.

The second thing that I recall of such significance occurred while I was falling asleep one night. Part dream, part mental meandering, I lay there seeing myself in my bed, as though from some point beside my prostrate body. The bedroom window was slightly open, and the room was very dark, lit only by a faint amount of moonlight.

There was movement on the windowsill. Again, fear did not play into it, as I watched tiny little men come streaming in from the darkness outside. They were about four inches tall, and almost all of them carried strange looking tools. Most had large noses and ears for their faces, wore hats and striped clothing, pants with suspenders and tiny shoes. Some had beards of grey or black or blonde. They made a ‘B’ line for my bed, jumping from windowsill to nightstand, to dresser, to pillow.

Much to my amazement, a few of them went to work on what appeared to be hidden hatches magically opened in my skin. The little men went right to it as though they did this every night, pulling out all sorts of wires and gadgetry out of my arms and legs and back and head. They were fixing me, rejuvenating me from my long day, replacing parts that had too much wear and tear on them. They spoke to each other in a strange language, some helping each other, some giving orders, until they appeared to be wrapping it up after a while. A couple of them were even brushing my hair out for me.

One of them tipped his hat to the ‘spirit’ me standing there surveying the scene, as if to say, “She’s all yours again… until next checkup…” And then they had gone back out into the night. After that, I was convinced that the little men came every night and performed this service on me, because I was a special being from another planet and all of us from that planet had to have this treatment in order to go from day to day.



It feels good to put these experiences into words, to have them recorded somewhere. They were so significant to me—such eye-opening visions. I remember that it wasn’t just play during these particular times… I stared over that tenuous lip of utter belief into the gaping, wide maw of an imaginary realm… and dove in as often as I could from then on.