My hogwarts letter never came, the satyrs never picked me up, and I can't the times Ive ran head first into a wardrobe. The Doctor had better have a good reason for missing my stop.
I never believed in Santa Claus, but when my Hogwarts letter didn't come, I balled my eyes out. I think I cried every day for the first week of sixth grade.
So, at four I totally didn't buy a story about a fat dude who likes chimneys that most kids eat up. At eleven, I wanted Hogwarts to be real so desperately that I almost convinced myself it was.
Sophomore year of college the apartment I lived in had a little trap door for putting the trash out. Not a chute, but like an actual tiny door, with a tiny room behind it just for trash. And then my landlord would come by and pick up the trash from all the apartments. (It was a sweet deal on our part.) We got a lot of questions about what this tiny door was, to the point where we just put up a sign that said "To Narnia."
I'm like the Curious Case of Benjamin I-Believe-In-Things-That-Clearly-Aren't-Real.
What didn't I imagine as a kid. I tried using The Force on a regular basis, worked on my ESP powers, dressed up like Wonder Woman (UnderRoos and plastic yellow rainboots), used my wiffle ball bat as a sword for countless adventures, roamed the woods in search of all kinds of adventure, dreamed of flying, going into outerspace, being a superhero, knight, damsel not-so-in-distress, commando, Laura Ingalls, gypsy fortune teller, etc., etc. I didn't read Harry Potter until the first movie cam out and by then I was in my 20's. I knew the letter wasn't coming, but I was really hoping my kids would get one and they'd need me to teach Muggle Studies! I guess I'll never grow up. Guess that's why I'm trying to be a writer, so I have a legitimate excuse to spend my time fantasizing about the impossible!
I grew up playing video games and found myself wishing that some of the cartoons were real where you get sucked into the game to help the heroes and that stuff. I wrote so many stories where that stuff happened.
But I have to agree with the whole mermaid thing. I always wanted to be a mermaid. Yes, a mermaid, not a merman. Or have wings like an angel, or be a princess. I even wrote a novel, a 70,000 word story about a man who falls in with a group of witches and they do all sorts of things to him including turning him into a mermaid or princess and stuff. I thought it was really good at the time.
The scary part is I still want to be a mermaid or princess.
The even scarier part is that I'm a guy.
Not scary at all! What if you were a mermaid princess in a past life??? ^^