2000-07-29 - 20:11 MDT

July 29, 2000

Counterpane

Tonight I reminisced a bit when my sentimental side happened to remember the poem, "The Land Of Counterpane," (think that is the title) by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is about what a boy does when he's sick-a-bed. He builds his own little world on his bed cover with his toys.

I am not sure how little girls run their show - - I did get roped into their fantasy world a time or two, playing the husband and father - - - but I was too young to fall into the proper frame of mind to be interested in playing dolls or school and managed to escape by saying that I am the uncle who is a sailor and that I am asea right now.

But, as a boy, regardless of the lack of toys, "Lets Pretend," was the quivering guts of "Playtime," we were receptive of each other's ideas and fell into our play quickly.

"Pretend you are a cowboy and I am one too. We are out rounding up cattle and run on to some rustlers, have a fight and drive the ones off we didn't shoot." When enough of the neighborhood boys were together, we would take sides, Cops 'n' Robbers or Cowboys 'n' Indians, maybe Pirates 'N' Sailors of the Royal Navy. Or, "Lets pretend this big box is a boat and the grass is the sea." "Yeah, yeah and lets make fishpoles and fish from the boat." "Pretend I got sick and the only thing that would make me well was eating a some kinda fish and you fish for that kind of fish." Then, "Okay, but you gotta keep gettin'sicker an' sicker while I keep fishing, you gotta groan a lot." We boys would carve revolvers out of the ends of apple boxes, make swords ot of lath with slightly thicker crosspieces of wood, bows and arrows, blanket tents. I don't think that mothers realize that the making and wielding of play weapons seem to be in the genes that boys are made of. I think that the "Let's Pretend," activities of childhood were the training period for prospective actors. The scenes and action were infinitely variable and subject to any change by mutual agreement at any second. I think a good part, maybe a great part of my fun was my mind soaring into the proverbial, "Flights Of Fantasy." It was dizzying and exhilarating and we seemed to spark each others mental prowess into going to greater flights.

We would get called to supper, but until we parted company, that call was turned into the lets pretend game until we were out of hearing of each other. Sometimes one would say, "Let's pretend that we are cops, and the drugstore over there is the bank and those guys are robbing it." Replied by, "Okay and pertend that we are in a squad car with the siren blasting away." We were pretty good at producing some fairly accurate sound effects, sirens, car wrecks, gun shots, machine gun shots and all the Pows and Clunks and Squealing Brakes that our imagination conjured up.

We continued our apprenticeship for being adults by living the, "Lets Pretend," life through the books we read and the Saturday movies we saw - with the serial cowboy movies and the cartoons and that thundering piano up front making some rousing mood music to match the pictures on the screen, further stirring our excitement and imagination.

Some of us I guess, never outgrew playing, "Lets Pretend," on a constant basis when we grew to voting age. For those lost in childhood, life was pretense all the way. Their actual marriages were pretending by them, in all serious activities of life they seemed to feel that they could change the game by changing their minds. The rest of us grew old enough that skipping was too child like and being galloping horses were no longer acceptable methods of play. But the guns roared, the cattle stampeded and the cop car wheeled around the corner, in our minds. We played, but it was mostly ball or tag or capture the flag.

Now that I am old, a good exciting movie makes my feet spur the stallion I am riding and handle my weapons of choice, my imagination coinciding with the action on the screen. And when it comes to football games, we men sit on the couch, one or more of us and cheer and yell as if the teams could hear our rooting for them, yunno, "Let's pretend we are on the fifty yard line and watching our team beat the socks off the other." Or horrors, making with the loud moans and groans as our team gets ground into the turf.

So it seems to this old "kid" that the game of, "Lets Pretend," lives with each of us, only in deep disguise. In imagination we return to the Land Of Counterpane where we control every activity of bedcover life.

Blog