BvEDA Day #2 - Games of the Older Child of Two
So yeah, said I was going to tell you about a dream I had that I found amusing, but as I ran over it in my head to share it with you, I kind of forgot the amusing part. Oops.
I'm not even an only child and I related to Maureen's Only child games. Because my sister and I are three years apart in age, when we were young we were usually simultaneously too far apart and too close in age to get along. For the most part I was an indoor child (the sun allergy being the biggest reason for this) , preferring to watch "edu-taining" programs like Eureka's Castle, Barney, Sesame Street and Mr. Roger's neighborhood. Occasionally though, I'd go outside. I think my choice of outside play (well okay, the inside play too, really) was a sign that I was destined to be a writer (and a Harry Potter fan, actually) because I came up with the most elaborate pretend games I have yet to encounter in a child.
Most little girls would play Barbies.
Or House.
Or School.
Not little Mk! (Who was not yet known as Mk but as Mary, or by the incredibly old people in her life as Mary Kathryn. (And to tell the truth, I actually preferred Mary Kathryn because it was at least a LITTLE but different than the 85,000 other Mary's around.)) I would play house, making good use of the sandbox/fort-thing/swingset contraption that my daddy built, only I was MAGIC. I ran around my two acres gathering up various plants and rocks and dirt and whatever else I could find and I would make potions and things to protect my homeland from the various BIG BADs that came along to cause destruction and Peril. Thinking abou tthis, I'm rather impressed with my younger self. All the plants and things always served the same purpose. The Onion Grass always made the bad guys fall asleep. The needles from the evergreen tree next to the fence always acted as a major ingredient in Little Mk's version of the Veritaserum. Though the Purple berry-things that grew on this weed had many uses.. mainly just because I like to squish them and stain things (but mostly my hands) purple.
The major drawback of this game of course would be that I always wanted a plant that seemed to intentionally grow near the poison Sumac, and being the owner of hyper-sensitive skin that I am, I break out in hives just being in a 10 foot radius of that stuff.
When we would go to Falls Church, Virginia (about an hour - hour and a half from my house) to visit my great-grandmother, I had to get even more creative. Nanny's house was not eqipped for entertaining children, so I did what is still one of my favorite things... snooping. The adults would all basically stay in the living room, talking sports and politics and aging and all that boring old people crap, so I would sneak upstairs into the attic, where there was a brilliant treasure trove of... well.. junk. Alot of stuff that might be antiques in another ten years or so, but at that point was just junk cluttering the attic space. I found in amazing though. I pretended I was Ariel in her little grotto, hiding my human treasures from my father. I pretended I was Rapunzel locked in the highest tower of the castle (cause when you're little, the second floor seems WAY HIGH!) I pretended I was Indiana Jones with pigtails exploring an ancient tomb and saving the day.
But this setting also provided for a few of my own games, that admittedly had their basis in the previously mentioned stories.
This is the only little Mk play that I can remember clearly.
That is of course, not counting the kabillions of "books" I wrote. My crowining acheivement was a 500, front-and-back "novel" handwritten on wide-ruled notebook paper. It was reminiscent of Stephen KIng - If Stephen King were a nine year old girl whos favorite word at the time was "eery." TO my knowledge, my mother still has this work of literary genious somewhere. If I ever find it, I just might have to share it with the world.
Wow. This got long.
Perhaps blogging every day wont be that hard!
XD
-Mk <3
I'm not even an only child and I related to Maureen's Only child games. Because my sister and I are three years apart in age, when we were young we were usually simultaneously too far apart and too close in age to get along. For the most part I was an indoor child (the sun allergy being the biggest reason for this) , preferring to watch "edu-taining" programs like Eureka's Castle, Barney, Sesame Street and Mr. Roger's neighborhood. Occasionally though, I'd go outside. I think my choice of outside play (well okay, the inside play too, really) was a sign that I was destined to be a writer (and a Harry Potter fan, actually) because I came up with the most elaborate pretend games I have yet to encounter in a child.
Most little girls would play Barbies.
Or House.
Or School.
Not little Mk! (Who was not yet known as Mk but as Mary, or by the incredibly old people in her life as Mary Kathryn. (And to tell the truth, I actually preferred Mary Kathryn because it was at least a LITTLE but different than the 85,000 other Mary's around.)) I would play house, making good use of the sandbox/fort-thing/swingset contraption that my daddy built, only I was MAGIC. I ran around my two acres gathering up various plants and rocks and dirt and whatever else I could find and I would make potions and things to protect my homeland from the various BIG BADs that came along to cause destruction and Peril. Thinking abou tthis, I'm rather impressed with my younger self. All the plants and things always served the same purpose. The Onion Grass always made the bad guys fall asleep. The needles from the evergreen tree next to the fence always acted as a major ingredient in Little Mk's version of the Veritaserum. Though the Purple berry-things that grew on this weed had many uses.. mainly just because I like to squish them and stain things (but mostly my hands) purple.
The major drawback of this game of course would be that I always wanted a plant that seemed to intentionally grow near the poison Sumac, and being the owner of hyper-sensitive skin that I am, I break out in hives just being in a 10 foot radius of that stuff.
When we would go to Falls Church, Virginia (about an hour - hour and a half from my house) to visit my great-grandmother, I had to get even more creative. Nanny's house was not eqipped for entertaining children, so I did what is still one of my favorite things... snooping. The adults would all basically stay in the living room, talking sports and politics and aging and all that boring old people crap, so I would sneak upstairs into the attic, where there was a brilliant treasure trove of... well.. junk. Alot of stuff that might be antiques in another ten years or so, but at that point was just junk cluttering the attic space. I found in amazing though. I pretended I was Ariel in her little grotto, hiding my human treasures from my father. I pretended I was Rapunzel locked in the highest tower of the castle (cause when you're little, the second floor seems WAY HIGH!) I pretended I was Indiana Jones with pigtails exploring an ancient tomb and saving the day.
But this setting also provided for a few of my own games, that admittedly had their basis in the previously mentioned stories.
This is the only little Mk play that I can remember clearly.
That is of course, not counting the kabillions of "books" I wrote. My crowining acheivement was a 500, front-and-back "novel" handwritten on wide-ruled notebook paper. It was reminiscent of Stephen KIng - If Stephen King were a nine year old girl whos favorite word at the time was "eery." TO my knowledge, my mother still has this work of literary genious somewhere. If I ever find it, I just might have to share it with the world.
Wow. This got long.
Perhaps blogging every day wont be that hard!
XD
-Mk <3