Remember when you were a kid and playing pretend was basically the best game ever? You could be whoever, whereever, whenever you wanted, and reality was no hindrance to your fun. Fly to outer space and shoot lasers out of your eyes? Sure! Transform at will into a talking unicorn-pegasus hybrid? No problem! Die a dramatic death and come back to life? Practically a given!
We were talking about this the other night, trying to figure out at what age playing pretend went out of style. M played openly until his friends started making fun of him for being uncool. I willingly gave up public playing in a pre-teen attempt to rush adolescence. But we both admitted to playing pretend privately until we were much older, and eventually these pretend games dissolved into our modern-day fantasy lives...which then led us to ask if we've ever really stopped playing pretend.
And of course, we haven't. From silly daydreams to the occasional complete delusion to the half-truths we tell ourselves just to get through the day, we still do. So what's the difference between the way we pretend now, and the way we played then? Obviously reality is more of an issue now. But how many of our modern-day hindrances are self-imposed, the byproduct of our shrinking imaginations?
I don't have any answers. Just pontificating into the ether.
But here's one of my favorite songs about playing pretend (the adult way):
Aaron and Maria - American Analog Set
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1 comment:
. . . "and no one gives a fuck about us!"
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