Playtime

 

During fourth and fifth grade, when I wasn’t playing horses or tetherball or, occasionally, Four Square, I was involved in a very detailed and elaborate game with friends (Audrey, Dawn and Teresa?). We were a weird family of weirdness. I think our last name was Go-Go or something like that; all our first names rhymed with our last. Our home was the jungle gym. This was in Enterprise, Oregon where I attended two years of school after we moved back from the Southwest and before we moved to Joseph. The fact that this particular game went on through two school years and only existed at recess fascinates me now that I think about it. We had situations that arose, we had relatives visit, the occasional classmate who joined us and then left. We traveled extensively, so that our house became a castle or hotel or rocky outcropping somewhere. I believe we were interchangeably dogs and cats as pets were needed.

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Audrey and I were good friends. She lived on Alder Slope with her grandparents, parents and two older sisters. They had goats and chickens, a couple of ancient horses and property littered with old cars and machinery. My favorite was an old DUKW boat that somehow had ended up in Wallowa County. In the winter we played through the woods and built snow forts along ditch banks, sledded down their driveway and when we got too cold went in and warmed up with hot chocolate made with goat milk. Then we’d gather all the various dolls in the house and create new worlds. When Audrey’s sisters would play this would sometimes take a dark turn as Ken inevitably was arrested for indecent exposure and went to jail. Sometimes Audrey’s chihuahua, Cookie, was the jailer and was allowed to chew Ken’s leg. After each arrest, Barbie moved on; off to see the world or build a rocket or organize a school. Something that said the one male doll is not really needed for anything here.

What made me think about this was an opinion piece today in the New York Times “Learning from ‘Leaf Town’”.  It made me hope that more children are creating these intricate worlds, using their play to make something better or subvert the norm, somewhere where imagination can just wander. 

*Picture from Insh.World