Childhood Play

When I remember my childhood, I often remember play.

I remember the red shag carpet in our basement that became deadly hot lava, and the couch cushion rafts that we would float on.

I remember playing “town”. And yes, I was a tease even there. I would usually end up the “robber” stealing the restaurant’s money and food, and daring them to do something about it…yikes!

I remember the dirt fields behind our house, and the bike riding and the “mountain climbing” and the wildlife safaris. I even remember one particularly exciting fort that we built after a builder left a deep hole out there. Some neighborhood kid brought some 4x8 boards over and we covered it over, and even put clumps of grass and weeds over it so that it blended in with the field. That was pretty cool, but it didn’t work very well in our war games because all it took is a few handfuls of dust down the hole, and it was an unbearable suffocating death trap.

I remember night games, and the epic steal the flag battles between Peter Blair and his hand picked army against me mine. Our boundaries were the entire block, and there were times when it felt like our tactical genius would have rivaled that of Napoleon. Looking back, I am guessing that for the most part, our steal the flag tactics were more like “run over there and try to get that flag…and don’t get touched”…but it really did feel like we were generals planning the invasion of Normandy.

I remember on day in particular:

I was playing with Star Wars action figures in some trees in front of our house (yes, trees used to be a major part of our yard before the great “tree holocaust” of recent years. I remember realizing in that perfect moment of play, that grown ups never played, and they didn’t have toys. I remember thinking that if there was ever a time when I didn’t want to sit under some trees and play with action figures…Well, frankly, if that ever happened, I wouldn’t want to live anymore.

Little did I realize at that time, that a riding lawn mower could be a toy for grown ups. DVD players, and computers, and iphones, and little HD video cameras…those were ALL toys. Thank goodness. Because without toys, who WOULD want to live any more?