First Memories of Play

First Memories of Play

     Playing as a child was always a time of wonder and fun. I grew up fairly poor in a mobile home park that was located just outside of Fairchild Airforce Base in Airway Height, WA. It was a daily occurrence to hear the rumble and feel the vibration of various Airforce jets and Boeing airplanes flying overhead. As a child (about 4years old or so) I would spent hours looking up at the sky and wonder where those planes were headed and if I would ever get on one going to some other country where they didn't speak English. Little did I know then that it would take me 30+ years to get to a remote area of a country where they didn't speak English on an island in the Philippines. I would imagine elaborate characters sitting on those planes like Egyptian princesses or Indian kings having come to Washington for some important meetings regarding their countries protection (since that is all the Airforce members did in my mind-defense) then traveling back to their palaces sipping on fancy drinks in first class & watching performances like fire jugglers and belly dancers. I remember daydreaming a lot when I was a child while playing alone and many times reenacting stories and books that I had heard.

     It wasn't until I was about 5yrs old that other families with children moved into the mobile home park and I began to explore more areas outside of my home and yard. There were at least 6 other children along my street who I would play with at least every other day. Back then our doors were always open so we would just walk right into one another's homes or stand outside and yell their name until they came out to join us. Then we would escape to our own land across the street in the vacant lot filled with overgrowth, tumbleweeds, broken glass, rusted nails, a few abandoned cars, etc. This was our playground since another block up from our "park" was the I-90 highway where none of us were ever allowed to get near without a parent even though the small grocery store was also on that corner, but it was OK since none of us ever really had any money anyway. We would spent hours playing in that field climbing on the car using it as a castle that we had to defend from the monsters. Finding a dirty jacket with some sort of dried red substance on it and creating a mystery of the girl who wore it and what happened to her and the clues we needed to follow to find and save her. Our toys were primarily whatever we could find in that lot including a lot of sticks and rocks that became everything from swords to fences to pets and grenades. We would all meet up and someone would have an idea that everyone else would follow and would continue playing until the street lights came on or someone got hollered at to come home.

     Our play was extremely risky. I can't imagine anyone letting their kids play in broken glass and rusty metal everyday unsupervised in society today.  We'd get small cuts, scrapes, etc from running through the uneven surface and falling down, but none ever got infected (thank God). There was only a few major injuries. One boy cut a big gash in bottom of his foot and had to go get stitches. After that everyone was required to wear shoes every time they left their homes. And I hit another boy square in the middle of the forehead with a rock while playing catch. He also had to get stitches and still has a scar from it today. Someone's parent was always across the street somewhere either working on a busted car in their driveway, inside the house watching TV and drinking beer, or taking care of other baby siblings, but none every verbally checked on us. Almost of my memories about playing as a child are positive, even when the boy, I think his name was David hurt his foot we all gathered around him like medics, one child who was wearing shoes took off their sock and put it on David's foot, another patted his face and wiped his tears, we all lifted him and carried him back across the street to his home. I did feel really bad about hitting Nick in the face, he immediately saw the blood and started screaming then ran home. The rest of us were so scared that we all ran to our homes too. I hid under the blankets in my bed. It was 10 min later when Nick showed up at our house with his dad and I had to explain what happened then go with them to the hospital. That was not fun, but I quickly learned why you don't throw rocks.