What did you enjoy doing most as a child?
Did you prefer doing it alone or with others?
I enjoyed creating. Legos, Erector Sets, villages, shooting ranges...in short, I liked imagining and playing. By myself or with others....sometimes.
I remember a time in the 3rd grade, I was attending school at Rimrock Elementary in Billings, Montana. I had injured myself somehow, I don't remember how, or what the injury was but, I wasn't able to run around and play the typical school yard games of soccer, tag, football, smear the queer...etc. So, I made up a stick village. On the far side of the playground was a row of large old maple trees. They left broken branches and twigs all over the west side of the grassy part of the playground. I spent each recess wandering around gathering sticks and twigs and piled them in an open flat dirt and sod area between two of the trees. In the following days, I spent my recesses laying out and creating a small stick village. Roadways, fences, log cabin houses and garden plots. As the week went on, my peers became curious about the small civilization I had been creating. By Thursday afternoon nearly all of my classmates, as well as some from some of the other classes, were turning the whole area under those maples into a miniature stick town. Those trying to avoid getting their clothes dirty were wandering around gathering up sticks and twigs while others expanded the area. It was quite the organization, all the way up until the 2nd graders, trying to prove they were cooler than the 3rd graders, brought out their kickballs, and proceeded to turn our stick town into their own basketball court. It took them moments to destroy that which had taken us almost the entire week to create. But I still have images of those little houses and fences stuck in my head. I still remember the feel of the twigs and the dirt as we snapped the sticks into equal lengths for fences and smoothed out pathways for roads and walks.
I also enjoyed setting up little green plastic army men up and down the side of a small hill that lined the back end of our backyard. I lived on Carson Court in Ely, Nevada. We lived in a small 3 bedroom house. The backyard wasn't huge, but the property had hills, mountains, and pine tree forests as its west side backyard border. As I stepped out the back door I was greeted by a nice sloping dirt hill. This hill provided many adventures. One of which was the land of many armed forces attacks and repels. We, my brother, our neighbors, and I, would spend hours setting up a few hundred little green army men. An assault force fortifying themselves behind pits, rocks, and bushes of the dirt hill. Then, we would assemble our own arsenal, small pebbles, boulders, and some large rocks. At a count of three, we would open fire. The battlefield became alive. The goal was to eliminate all of the invaders. One by one, and sometimes in one fell swoop, the little green men would get squashed until only one remained. A dozen well aimed shots later and the last green man would fall to our barrage. Then, we'd set them all up again. I can still smell and feel the dust that rose up from our cannon fodder.
Further up into the trees, beyond the small dirt hill, was a vast playground of pine trees, sage brush, horny toads, blue bellied lizards, and gun battles. We spent many weekend hours playing cowboys, army men, and survivalist.
Even at the age of 13, when young men are supposed to be giving up there childish ways and becoming men, I could be found out in the backyard in the tall grass with my G.I.Joe Men, tents, gun placements, and jet fighters re-enacting rescue missions and ambushes on enemy targets.
I still have many of the legos that I accumulated as a child. I enjoy the transformation that happens when placing a "toy" in the hands of even adults can inspire us to think outside of the box and create that which we think is somehow impossible.
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