Day dreaming

Like a lot of kids William could daydream for hours on end. Unlike most of those kids was the way that William would daydream. I don't mean in what was happening in his dreams; that was all the usual fun stuff with heroes, and flying, or maybe pretending to be an animal. It was literally in the way he would go about it.

Just to give some background, William's parents were exceptionally fond of their local library and spent quite a bit of time there. It was an old library with that old library smell. The floors were wood and warm near the windows where sunlight spilled in and there were nooks to sit in and big tables to spread books out on. It even had a big sign up front reminding people to be quiet. You don't see those signs too much any more. William's parents went so far as to put bumperstickers on their car that said things like "Books, they're the right thing to do and a good way to do it!" and "Support your local library".

Well this library had two sets of winding staircases leading up to the second floor or down to the first depending on which way you were going. The really cool thing was that one of the staircases was tucked away. It was obscured by an odd architectural bend in the building, so very few people ever bothered to use it. So William would slowly climb up one staircase to the second floor and, when no one was looking, would meander to the back staircase and quietly mount the bannister. Slowly, to not to attract attention, he would quietly slide down the long winding pole to the bottom. He never looked down, always up. He didn't do it in order to see where he had been, but more in order not to see anything at all. Seeing often requires reaction or thought and that was no way to start a daydream.