By DONALD DeMARCO
When I was a wee lad, and long before our family owned a television set, I looked forward to Saturday mornings when a program by the captivating title, Let’s Pretend, came over the airways. In those nearly forgotten days, the radio had both a unifying as well as an educational power. The show gave me permission to escape from the humdrum order of day-to-day life and dwell in a world created by the imagination. The idea that I could pretend gave me a sense of delectable freedom. I was not tied to a predictable set of rules. My imagination was unfettered and allowed me to envision fantastical things.
Let’s Pretend carried me into a world of fairy tales. But it always knew when to stop pretending so that it did not completely exclude reality. This was simply a matter of common sense. As young boys, friends and I were fond of playing back porch poker. In order to make the game more exciting, we allowed deuces to be wild. Our affection for pretending that a deuce was not simply a deuce, however, did not extend to making everything wild. There was a point at which pretending would need to stop so that reality could maintain its presence. If every card is “wild,” no one could win or lose. The game would have completely lost its meaning.
I was enchanted by the story of the poor fisherman who captured a magic fish but returned it to the sea when it promised to grant him a series of wishes. The fisherman wanted nothing for himself, but his greedy wife requested and was granted one wish after another until she wished to be empress of the universe. She had gone too far. There are limits to everything. She forfeited everything that was previously granted to her.
The fable took me on wings of imagination, but did not lead me out of reality. Greed cannot go unchecked. We cannot escape the moral order. Riches do not fill the soul. Generosity should be followed by gratitude. These were some of the moral lessons contained in this enchanting fable. My imagination soared, but its wings always remained tethered to logic.
I could delight in Jack climbing a beanstalk, but I was even more delighted to know that he was not consumed by an ogre. Pinocchio, though made of wood, could become a real boy, but only after he displayed bravery and concern for others. Cinderella was freed from the grip of her cruel stepmother and conniving sisters because she was pure of heart. Virtue is rewarded, vice is punished. The moral order is preserved.
My journey into fairyland was a vicarious odyssey, listening to heroic characters overcoming one challenge after another until they finally reach the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Moral lessons can be captivating when they are prefaced by imaginative tales. They are truly rewarding when put into practice. I remain forever grateful for the moral lessons delivered long ago by Let’s Pretend.
My main point in this brief article is to compare the realism of Let’s Pretend, with the completely unrealistic pretending that is going on these days in the world of politics. Let us pretend that that unborn human being is really not a human being at all. Let us pretend that “marriage” between two people of the same sex is equal to a real marriage between a man and a woman. Let us pretend that there are as many different genders as one likes. Let us pretend that science can cure all our ills.
These pretensions are not at all like the stories featured on Let’s Pretend, because they do not allow room for reality. Abortion, same-sex unions, along with an endless number of genders are not wedded to a moral lesson. They are regarded as pure and undefiled in themselves. These pretenses go so far as to erase any relationship with morality. Without a return to morality, the ogre has Jack for lunch, Pinocchio dies at sea if Stromboli did not chop him up for firewood, and both ugly sisters run off with the Prince.
These are not stories that children want to hear. Every child has the right to believe that one day he will be a hero. We would be wise not to violate that right.
Ray Kinsella has offered us a kind of modern fairy tale that has become immensely popular. An Iowa farmer, after hearing a voice, builds a baseball field in his cornfield that attracts the ghosts of baseball legends, such as Shoeless Joe Jackson. At this point in the story, imagination has been given free rein. Nonetheless, the story would implode on itself if these former baseball titans did not commence to play baseball according to its strict rules. Imagination, in the final analysis, must yield to logic.
The great problem in America these days is that the zeal for pretending has gone to the point of pretending that there is no moral order. It represents the triumph of the “wicked witch.” It is the world judging the world, rather than the world being judged by a higher standard. God is dead, long live chaos!
In “The Ethics of Elfland,” from his eminently quotable Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton states: “Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticized Elfland, but Elfland that criticized the earth.” Our ability to pretend can help us to understand the ineffaceable character of morality. But woe to those, as Isaiah warned long ago, who pretend that there is no moral order.
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