I'd like to clarify something right off the bat -- when I use the word "play," I don't mean games or sports or the general pretending that is a part of writing or drawing or painting or other creative endeavors. I'm speaking of childhood play. The kind of play we could only take part in when our imaginations could conjure absurdly vivid imagery without the aid of mind-altering drugs.

Sure, you can recall playing with dolls or action figures, having tea parties, playing Cowboys and Indians, pretending you were an archeologist in the jungle; I can remember those things as well. But we're remembering them with adult minds. We see our old toys and the surroundings we played in with adult eyes. We can't see the blackness of deep space around our plastic Millenium Falcons anymore. The woods out back don't look like a jungle full of enemy soldiers anymore, they're just woods.

Did you realize you were losing the ability to play when it was happening? I didn't. If I had to pick an age, I would say it happened when I was thirteen or so. That would only be a guess, though. I do remember picking up my Barbie dolls one last time around that age and thinking "What do I do now? Wait... I've forgotten how to PLAY!" Some short time after that, I threw them away. Not because I resented the toys -- it wasn't their fault I couldn't play anymore -- but because I no longer had a use for them.

Oh, I have lots of toys these days; I have an absurdly large collection of My Little Ponies, several G. I. Joes, a huge stack of coloring books and a multitude of crayons, McFarlane figures on shelves, and a plethora of other things, but I don't play with them. They sit on shelves, in drawers, in boxes, like ages old relics. I color sometimes, but it doesn't hold the magic that it once did. Adults just can't get the same things from toys that children can.

You might be thinking "I could still play if I wanted to." Well, give this a try:

Pick up a random item that's near you. Now pretend it's something else -- anything else. See it as this other item. What is it? Who does it make you become? Is this working for you the way it used to? If it is, you are a rarity and I am intensely jealous. For the most part, though, adults are unable to do this. Really do it, I mean. For a child, any item in the world can become something completely different in a matter of seconds and hours of fun can be had. You can't do it anymore. Isn't that a fucking bummer?

Parents should make children understand that the splendid magic of childhood imagination is ephemeral. Parents should tell kids that it's something they don't get to keep forever, so they'd better use it, by God! Use it all they can before their time with it runs out!

 

 

 
Sara T. Punk was born and raised in a vile little church town in northeastern Oklahoma. ...about 3,000 very oppressive people and 32 churches...

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