I was thinking about how I used to see the world through my designer goggles. You know, the way kids see what is and think of it in terms of how terrific or terrible they find it, and what they would do if they were The Boss and could make it exactly to their specifications. Yeah, you know: just as adults do. I still never visit a city or park, or sit in any room, without redecorating it or rebuilding it entirely, to have greater comforts, improved functionality, and superior beauty. All according to my standards, of course.

But as a kid, I got a running start at this by scrounging up every bit of interesting scrap and oddity I could find, and taking my current collections and organizing them into bookshelf-filling houses, costumes for characters I made out of other scraps, or perhaps imaginary landscapes into which I could mentally insert any stories I wanted to create. And, unlike some, I never grew out of it. I have always been surrounded by enablers who have not only permitted but even fed and encouraged my addiction to playing with reality. How would I remake the universe in which I live? I don’t know my plan in its entirety yet, but I am always, always working on it.