When i was a child, my favorite toy (or rather "toys") would without a doubt have to be my collection of small action figures. However, I didn't simply play with them in their designed roles. Action figures that represented a character from a certain TV show were not used as those characters in my mind as I played. I would gather up as many as possible and enter a room with a large table or couch by myself and simply start to think. I would invent my own stories for them, my own scenarios for them to play out. They had their own names (not the ones that they were supposed to have), stories, and adventures that I would create for them. I would spend literally hours wrapped up in these worlds of my own creation; sometimes I would carry the characters and stories over into the next day, other times I would simply start over and create all new adventures and characters in my mind. I can't remember much, but I do recall how much fun it was. Eventually, when I grew too old to have such toys, I donated them to the salvation army so that other children would be able to play with these beloved toys as I did, however I'm almost positive that I may still have a few of them lying around my closet somewhere in bins. These toys are what I, and many others, believe made me into the great writer that I am. (I'm not so self-centered as to call myself a great writer based on my own opinion, I only say it because I've heard it from so many other including teachers and the like) This early fascination with creating my own stories to play instead of playing some that somebody else had created for me is what led me to have such a great love of writing novels; a hobby that I still practice to this day.
I had tons of toys that I would do that with too, but instead of doing it with action figures, I would do it with barbies. It's odd that boys are supposed to play with action figures while girls play with barbies. When it came down to it we both did the same thing. A lot of people think that with barbies you're supposed to think about mundane things like getting married and having kids while with action figures you're supposed to think about cool things like war and secret agents and stuff. With my barbies, however, I would always create a scenario that wasn't very normal. I watched a lot of horror movies as a kid, so a lot of the times it was sort of horror related. Like, I remember I had a barbie hotel and I made believe that it was haunted and my barbies were going in to investigate.
Posted by: Alexandra Marceau | 02/17/2011 at 10:17 AM