Day 2

[bironic]

Holy crap, guys. Day one has more than doubled the largest single-day comment count from last year. I'm so thrilled by the turnout (so far: 14 participants, 6 countries), and hearing all these memories, and seeing everybody talk to each other, and just, yay

Comments

[nicocoer]

When I was wee, meaning when my parents were together, I had all sorts of things as far as dolls and Barbies go. When we left, I only took a few things, and when we returned from Washington state (after Maine) I had even less.

So When we moved into the trailer, My sister and I had the toys from when my mother was a kid that were still buried under mountains of piled up random crap. We found an old Hearts album and a closet fully of clothes from the late 70's and early 80's. There was also some old barbies and a plastic bus.

We ended up having dramatic! Soap Opera-esque! stories in which illegitimate children were made, elopements were common, and two of the female dolls ran off together when their husbands weren't looking. The clothes came on and off a lot, and usually it was behind the plastic van. They also had huge "houses" that we constructed out of blankets, furniture, and imagination. Did I mention that we didn't have TV at that point? and when we did, we didn't have TV, but rather a Play Station hooked up to a Tv without sound.

Alternatively, My brother would get out his action figures, And we'd have epic assassinations of Diplomat Barbie and sky diving from the top bunk. Ir having a Firing squad set up to get Barbie for spying. Very Special Ops type of thing. Not too surprising looking back at it. My brother was reading Tom Clancy at that point, though he was only in 3rd or 4th grade.

When it comes right down on it, I always got along better with my brother. From when we were little and I'd Hang out in his room with his boy toys while my hair set in curlers for pageants to hunting frogs in a back puddle to Video games years later when I'd sit next to him on the top bunk and watched him beat Shinra in Final Fantasy VII. He didn't beat the game until we moved to Utica, but I remember watching him fight the SOLDiERs In their blue uniforms as we ascended the Shinra corporate building.

Around the same time, I found a copy of Phantom of the Opera on cassette, and fell asleep to that. Before that, we had all slept to the sound of the audio books for The Screwtape Letters and Interview With a Vampire. Phantom was a natural progression, I suppose.

[bironic]

What adventures! And very liberal ones, too.

Did I mention that we didn't have TV at that point?

Perhaps evidence that imagination can soar when kids aren't occupied 24/7 by prefabricated fantasies like TV and video games.