(no subject)

Dear Diary,

I wish I had gotten to play more growing up. Or play longer, I suppose. Not in the sense of staying out later or being allowed more playdates with friends; longer into life.

When I was 12 or 13 is when I think the toys began to disappear. Make up and permission to "go out" with boys didn't appear, but I was given the definitive impression that playtime was "over". It was time to start "growing up". I had no clue what that meant, if it didn't mean boys and make up. Eventually driving and going away to school, but that was far off. The wholesome teenage books and tv shows being filtered into my brain didn't tell me much else. Career, I suppose- "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Marriage and children were both assumed.

It was also around this point when I started discovering that fantasy novels weren't restricted to children's books- that didn't go over well. And admitting to juvenile "crushes" on fictional characters was just abnormal where I lived. . . I was just abnormal where I lived.

We used to play "Pioneers"- my siblings, the neighborhood kids and I. But what started as a somewhat fanciful version of "House" became a byline for . . . anything. Space explorers, residents of a medieval castle or a fairytale cottage- it all became fair game under the term "pioneers". I don't really remember when it stopped- just that . . . it did . . . suddenly. I don't even think I was in the 9th grade yet. To be honest, I don't even think I was in the 8th.

I remember our last days playing with dolls, because we declared it. I couldn't have been past 6th grade. There was . . . an invisible line. For most people I knew, imagination was for children. My father, a self-described child at heart, let me keep my fantasies as best he could. But now that I am older, I remember our rare fights and can't fathom the pressure he was under. Small towns are ruled by conformity. 

I never seemed to learn this vital skill. I went through life a "collection of jumbled memes", as a friend once described himself. Phases where I told no one, but I was secretly convinced I was a changling, left by the faeries and desperately wanting to go back. Phases where I was the cynic, the scholar who didn't believe in silly new age ideas. Phases were I worked at being a member of the dominant paradigm, and tried to fit in. 

Now, I understand. Through "play", we learn much about our essential selves. When a society makes a decision to shorten the number of years "play" is an allowable pasttime, they often fill that period with a sort of indoctrination. This doesn't say that every little town or conservative hamlet is an evil empire; it does, however, speak volumes about our species' oft destructive desire to control, make similar, and bland.