wellbehavedwomendomakehistory:
wellbehavedwomendomakehistory:
It’s kind of ridiculous when people talk about how children’s play is “simple” and “innocent”. When I was little we used to play at wars and kidnappings and murders and executions. We played slaves. (one of the moms told us to stop because she thought there was some kind of racial context. I swear there wasn’t.) My mom would come into our room like, “why is one of you tied to a chair with a shoelace? I thought I told you not to do that. It’s hazardous. Untie her immediately.” “But MOOM you’re ruining EVERYTHING”
Slavery was involved a little too often, now that I think about it. We didn’t have kidnapping so much as homeless orphans surviving in various wildernesses, but there were a lot of how-to-escape scenarios.
When I was younger my two best friends and I where obsessed with pioneers. The majority of our time was spent pretending our parents had died of cholera, measles, whooping cough, fever n’ ague, etc., and we were left to travel west on our own. Everyone always died in the end.
My brothers and I sometimes played Tigers, in which we’d literally doggy pile and then claw at whoever was the biggest, because tigers.
Also we made bows and arrows and shot at each other (we all got very good at dodging, and no one was severely injured). Our parents made all string disappear from the house after the oldest made a bow that could do damage to a target over twenty feet away. We had so many stick fights that our parents had to implement a set of rules specific to length of staffs and also the types of attack.I love the responses on this post.
I routinely played Barbie Hostage Scenario and my Mom would leave soap operas on all the time before I was school-age, so you’d find Barbie and Ken naked on top of each other under the covers all the time since I was like three years old.
I regularly pretended to be an orphan lost in the wilderness. Or homeless in a medieval city.
On the playground, my friend and I were warrior princesses on horses and sometimes dinosaurs that would patrol the playground and other kids would call for help getting down from a jungle gym or if they were being bullied and we would ride our horses ir dinosaurs to them and save them.
Man I can’t remember all the crazy stuff zevri and I used to get up to… Pretty sure most of the time we had elemental powers tho, generally used for war and not for peace. Plus I think once we were sisters whose father was a political figure who got assassinated, and the assassins were out to get us too.
My closest friend and I came up with all sorts of elaborate dramas for our Barbies and once the story got so sad that we both ended up crying.
We also played Tomb Raider where I was Lara Croft and she was Jaqueline Natla (the villain in the first game), and I would have to survive among (imaginary) wild animals and solve mysteries.
We played orphans but the people who ran the orphanage were secretly giants who would eat you if you were adopted in two weeks. We escaped ALL the time though and we’d take others us to save them, so it was fine. We also played one were we were evacuees and babies were trying to take over the world and a different one where there was a robot uprising and we had super powers. We would sometimes combine the games in the one game. Also, my mum once walked in on my friend putting beaded necklaces over my sister’s baby doll “what are you doing?” “I like to decorate them before sacrificing them”
I love the responses that I got on this post.
Ah yes, the imagination of children! My husband was babysitting a friend’s child, she was maybe 3 at the time. Adorable little girl, curly black hair and bright blue eyes, the picture of innocence. He saw her drawing with only a red crayon one day and asked her what it was. She looked at him and cheerfully said, “It’s blood Mr. Mike, it’s blood!”
Her mother also told me that she would occasionally “hang” a My Little Pony with shoelace as “punishment” for some supposed wrongdoing.
I always figured she’d be one of those kids who dressed all in pink while silently cursing her enemies. o_o;
I devised a new version of Alice in Wonderland for my brother, and also came up with “Cars” before it was a movie, where there was a whole town of his Hotwheels and they all had Twisted Metal abilitie sand had to save their town from invading cars (when they weren’t in car school).
my cousins and I loved pretending we were kids lost in the middle of an alien invasion and had to navigate through parks and neighborhoods to avoid getting caught, and also the game where we were poor orphans carrying our sick brother around trying to get away from the tornado about to hit.
My best friend and I had the game where we were space princesses who ruled moons and stars, the game with the monster bording school, and the game that was a hybrid of Winx Club/A:TLA that took hours to create because of all the world building involved. we eventually turned that one into short stories when we got too old to play.
Who even says kids’ games are simple? Do adults just forget when they get older and never bother to play with their kids or something? That’s kind of sad.
I played Silence of the Lambs with my Barbies
^She wins
I was OBSESSED with treasure hunts and “Mythical field guides” brought on by The Spiderwick Chronicles. I remember packing up almost all my fantasy books and bringing a “map” (really it was a gameboard that looked a map), and drag my friends throughout the neighborhood looking for some lost treasure or magic beast to slay. I was also determined to make a “Fantasy Club” for like minded individuals, but it never quite took off. *sigh* Memories….
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