Since childhood, I have dreamed of visiting far-away places.
The West Indies, in particular, fired my fancy, and I would revel in the feeling of actually being there. Dreams are wonderfully inexpensive. As an adult, I continued to dream my dreams because I had no money or time to make them ‘come true.’
Last year, I was taken to the hospital for surgery. While recuperating, I decided to intensify my favorite daydream since I had time on my hands.
I wrote to the Alcoa Steamship Line, asking for free travel folders. I pored over them, hour after hour, choosing the ship, the stateroom, and the seven ports I most desired to see.
I would close my eyes and, in my imagination, walk up the gangplank of that ship. I felt the movement of water as the great liner pushed its way into the open ocean. I heard the thud of waves breaking against the sides of the ship, felt the steaming warmth of a tropical sun on my face, and smelled and tasted salt in the air as we sailed through blue waters.
For one solid week, confined to a hospital bed, I lived the free and happy experience of being on that ship. Then, the day before my release from the hospital, I tucked the colored folders away and forgot about them.
Two months later, I received a telegram from an advertising agency informing me that I had won a contest. I remembered having deposited a contest coupon a few months earlier in a neighborhood supermarket but had completely forgotten about it.
I had won first prize, and – wonder of wonders – it entitled me to a Caribbean cruise sponsored by the Alcoa Steamship Line.
But the wonder didn’t stop there. The very stateroom I had imaginatively lived in while confined to my hospital bed had been assigned to me. And, to make an unbelievable story even more unbelievable, I sailed on the very ship I had chosen – which stopped in not one, but all seven of the ports I had desired to visit!
—F.G.
“To travel is the privilege, not of the rich but of the imaginative.” (Stephen Berrien Stanton, “The Essential Life”, 1908)
Story from the book The Law and The Promise