Some day I'm going to grow up. Not yet, because I'm still a kid. And besides I don't want to be a grown up because grown ups don't listen to kids.

I've got great lots of great ideas about, well, everything. Every time I think of one I put it im my little bottle they call "imagination". They say it's fake but it's real to me. And someday, if they'll listen to me when I'm still a kid, they'll see what I see.

I can make the ocean fill my bathtub or fly a cardboard box around the world because of the little bottle of explosive energy they call imagination. I don't know why that's what they call it. But I know it's a bottle that I must have swallowed when I was a baby.

And then when you get to be an adult you lose your bottle cause even when your doctor checks you out you don't have one. Kids have one but the doctor doesn't tell us. Why else is he feeling my neck and looking in my mouth? He wants to make sure it's still in one piece cause if it's not then the aliens won't take it.

There's a time between kids and grown ups and they call it "teenager" and all you try to do is mess things up. So the space aliens zap all the messer-upper teenagers so they can't move and take them away, the bottles I mean.

And then you get to be a grown up. Some kids think it will be fun. But, I never see a grown up flying a cardboard box around the world or searching for underwater treasures in the bathtub. Some kids think grown ups aren't afraid of anything but, they are afraid. They just put their teddies in secret places where kids aren't allowed and then they get them when the kids are supposed to be asleep. You know when grown ups say "Don't touch that"..."That's not for kids you know"... or "Get away from that", that's where they have teddies hidden. I don't know why they have to hide their teddies from me, I wouldn't make fun of them. But anyway, being a grown up isn't good to me if you can't fly or be a submarine and you have to hide your teddy what is the fun part?

Sometimes, when I'm supposed to be sleeping, I sneak downstairs and see mommy and daddy and they are talking about someone called Bills. I don't think I've met him yet. They only talk about him when they think I'm not listening so I think he might not be very nice. Kevin said his mommy and daddy know Bills too. That's another reason I don't want to be a grown up. Having to deal with people like Bills is no fun.

So I don't want to grow up, but when I have to, I'm not going to mess things up. I will keep my bottle safe. Then I'll take my teddy into my purple spaceship and we'll find the aliens that take the bottles. We won't hurt them because mommy says if you're mean to people they won't listen to you. So some day when teddy and me find the aliens who take our bottles we'll tell them to give them back! And we'll all be friends.

Then teddy and me will go into the dryer to find all of daddy's missing socks.