The original Gameography map that I came up with was very cluttered and disorganized. There was a wide range of games listed, from peek-a-boo to Sims, Barbie to Zelda. It was honestly quite surprising just how much was coming back to me that I had completely forgotten about – or at least, had been buried deep under everything else. It didn’t take long, though, to begin noticing some patterns.
The first was all of the “playing pretend”, or as I would have pronounced it as a child, “purtend”. It started at a very early age, probably from being at daycare so much. My parents worked a lot at the newspaper and so I stayed at daycare until I was old enough to go to school. In a recent conversation with my Mom, she said she had tried so hard to keep me away from Barbies, to try and curb the body standards and let me choose my own toys without gender in mind (my mother is a saint), but it was unavoidable when I went to daycare. Rosie, the owner of the home-run daycare, had a huge dollhouse and countless Barbies, and I instantly fell in love. So, reluctantly my mother came to terms with it, and my Nana got me a handmade dollhouse for my 2nd Christmas. She had given my parents money to hire a local craftsman to build it for me, and it was huge. Which was a big deal, since my parents could never afford to spoil me like that. It stood about 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide, with four rooms and two drawers on the bottom. It even had carpet and wallpaper; I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world.
This sparked a long-lived love affair with role-playing. Though it started with Barbies, that spread to playing house, kitchen, dress-up, makeovers, store, and anything else that is cringe-worthy domestic. But it didn’t stop there, once I had significant contact with films and TV shows, the plot-based role-playing started. Power Rangers, Power Puff Girls, and most significantly with Spy-Kids. My best friend at the time and I would spend hours and hours crafting cardboard “gadgets” and spy gear, then create other identities and play them out. It was all very complex, and lasted an embarrassingly long amount of time – I was still role-playing into my pre-teen years with story-lines like Lord of the Rings and something made-up simply called “Fire Witches” with my school friends.
Looking back on it, I believe that I was usually in instigator of these games. I wanted so badly to create characters, stories, and new identities for myself. I believe this comes from the fact that with most people, I was painfully shy. But amongst my close friends (many of whom I am still very close with) I felt comfortable enough to explore a different side of myself. It was a fantastic creative outlet, since I would be making physical objects like spy gear, spell books, wands, and magical jewelry, and also because I would create these long, complex storylines and characters, collaboratively with my friends. It spanned over a period where I felt like an only child, my brother seven years my elder and pretended I didn’t exist (which is far better than being mean to me) and was feeling lonely and bored when not at school or daycare. Though I’m not saying that it completely shaped who I am, it certainly gave me the tools to think creatively and work collaboratively, something that continued on in the next part of my life.
On the second half of my gameography map, you will see “SLMC”, short for Silver Lake Mennonite Camp. I went to this camp from when I was about five years old until around sixteen. It shaped me in a number of ways, but the games we played certainly had an obvious and direct influence on me, as they were intended to. Aside from the more usual camp games like Fruit Basket Upset, Darling If You Love Me, Blob Tag, and Graveyard, we also had a session every other day called “Initiatives”. It took place in a secluded part of camp, quite a walk through the woods from everything else. You would go with your cabin, about 6-10 other girls, to a bizarre place just past the “Enchanted Forest”. There were different stations with odd structures, like a rope web, a wooden teeter-totter, a small platform, logs, stumps, and the list goes on. The instructor would have you, as a cabin, try to solve a puzzle or challenge together. They were psychologically designed games to build teamwork, communication, trust, problem solving, and conflict resolution skills. This had a more obvious end-goal, and definitely impacted my abilities in all those areas. I still use the skills I learned at camp in everyday life, and I certainly used them to get the jobs I’ve had. I believe the collaborative and creative side of role-playing blended seamlessly with the teamwork and problem solving challenges of Initiatives, completing my game story.
