Kaufman (1994) suggests that James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is possibly the most famous American short story. Whether or not that is true (and there are those who might argue for "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", for example, the product of another great American humorist, Mark Twain), his repetitive line, "pocketa-pocketa-pocketa" certainly insinuates itself into the brain once one has read it, much as a rendition of "The Ant's Picnic" ("The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah!") latches onto one's musical brain cells when one has heard its repetitive chorus of nonsense. Unless one puts one's mind immediately on something else, one is likely to "go down into the ground to get out of the rain" along with the ants.

             In fact, daydreaming-escaping into a secret world-is as common as singing a children's song. Is it a good thing to do? Arguably, prisoners have borne long sentences by inhabiting secret worlds. Also arguably, great scientific breakthroughs have arisen from a scientist's secret world. Great art certainly has been created that way; indeed, Thurber's own early life, the same one that engendered "The Night the Bed Fell" and his dozens of other comic takes on his own real life, would argue that people from all walks of life can benefit from a little 'secret world' visitation, if only to maintain what sanity they have left.

             Klinger (1987), writing in Psychology Today, noted that the thoughts of humans constantly leap from one thought to another, and from one type of daydream to another. Psychologists, he notes, "usually label thoughts as daydreams if they are about something apart from the person's immediate situation, are spontaneous and are fanciful (with things happening in ways that are contrary to reality)" (p. 36+).

             Certainly, Walter Mitty's dreams fit that description. Reading the story, it is difficult to see how an obviously mild-mannered (not to say mousy) man as Mitty would need escape from his overbearing, nit-picking harridan of a wife.