Saturday, January 12, 2008

Play time

Carter is having a friend stay over tonight. He's been very, very, very excited about it all week! (Did I mention he's excited?)

For whatever reason, he's only had one other sleepover and it was with the same boy. He happens be in Carter's class, plus goes to Sunday School with him so this should work out well. He's a good kid so I have no worries.

They have a full schedule planned: Sledding (did that, may do it some more); homework (which, if you can believe, they are actually doing right now); movie (probably "Underdog"); playing PS2; pizza; and maybe playing PS2. Sounds like a fun time to me.

Can you believe I only had two "friends from school" sleepovers in my childhood and both were not until my senior year? One was New Year's Eve and the other "camping" in the yard Memorial Day weekend. And I wouldn't dare divulge details from those!

We did have one special guest sleep over many times when we were kids -- and that was my cousin Lonna. She was just a bit younger than us twins so the three of us found lots of interesting things to do. Many times we'd roll about in the yard, practically folded up inside those huge inflated tractor tire inner tubes. One time Lonna fell off a pile of those and broke her collar bone so that was the end of that.

Mostly we played what we might just call role-playing games. When we were younger, not knowing anything about being politically correct, we'd play Indians. In this photo taken in the summer of 1977, Lonna (at right) and I were posing in our vegetable garden. One of my older sisters took the picture and wrote the caption: The Great Warrior "Augusta" and Chief "Swanta" stalking the enemy! Pretty intimidating, eh?

When we got a little bit older, then there was no question, we were playing Charlie's Angels! You recall (if you are anything close to being hip) that the three original "angels" were Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson), Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett-Majors) and Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith). You'd think we'd all fight to be Jill, but I usually picked Sabrina. I think I thought of her as more of a tomboy like me. So naturally I was perfect for the part!

I don't know when we outgrew all that (or maybe I haven't), but it's a shame that we don't see a lot kids playing that way any more. We say "go out and play" and their response is "play what?" What happened to imagination?

I'm glad the boys are at least spending some time outside today. So far the TV hasn't come on but I'm sure it won't be long. I'm actually looking forward to telling them to "calm down" or "be quiet" tonight when they're supposed to be sleeping. Because that means they're talking and laughing ... not pressing buttons on controllers to fight monsters and save our planet.

I doubt they'll remember those PlayStation battles like I remember stalking the enemy in the cornfield or fighting bad guys with the other angels!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh those were the days! Thank you Loving Sister for the fond reminder of all those things we used to do. I remember the fall leaf forts, the snow houses, playing Charlies Angels outside, playing "apartment" upstairs, stalking the enemy in the corn. We do not see that kind of imagination very often in kids these days. I'm talking about my own too. Thanks again for the memories. Lenesker

Anonymous said...

Thank you Robyn!! You put a giant smile on my day!! I am at the library - because my computer went on to happier places - and I had to show your blog to my friend, the librarian. Didn't we have a lot of fun?!? I was thinking of you last week, when I was in WARM Florida, listening to a cd I burned. I had John Denver's, "Sunshine On My Shoulder's" playing and I thought of us watching that movie and playing and singing that song on your big front porch and while running around the big tree! You opened up a few gigabytes of memories with this blog. Do you remember sitting in your room and making lists of t.v. characters, theme songs, etc. that we tried to remember? I still remember the poem in your bathroom - "Out there beyond the lilac bush, It stood so drab and bare...." Thanks for the smiles and the beautiful picture!! LJL#5