8 Mar 2001 
 
Why would the Ancient Mariner make a bad shortstop? 
 
Because he stoppeth one in three. 
 
(joke courtesy of Oh, Pascal! the tome from which I learned pascal 
programming) 
 
Speaking of being one in three, I am.  One in three sisters, that is.  I 
must say for any decent kiddie role-playing game, there is a quorum of 3 
children.  It is really difficult to get any kind of interpersonal 
dynamics going with 2 people.  So, let me think of the most popular 
"scenarios" my sisters and I dealt with (which reminds me why I fit in 
with the S&M situation so well - I was used to having my playmates 
living with me or nearby.  All my best friends in elementary school 
years lived on the same street as me, and preferably next door.  I am a 
very lazy socializer. Thus, CATT was a plus for me.): school (roles: 
principal, teacher, student), business (roles: boss, secretary, client), 
indian tribe (actually there was one role, and we all held it -- indians 
- and no, there were no cowboys.  But we did have a huge quartz rock 
which was our tribe's "magic crystal".), mass (roles: priest, reader, 
altar server - we used Pringles for the hosts and Sprite for the wine 
and my children's Bible for the readings), the Tomorrow People and its 
variants (roles: villain, victim, saver - catching victims either 
involved getting them with a butterfly net or sticking them in the cubby 
underneath the basement steps), army (roles: officers, drill sergeants, 
privates).  Hmmm, that's all I can think of right now. Oh yeah, circus.  
In which we did tricks on our rather beat up playset (Dad installed it - 
=we= beat it up.  I think by the time we left Atlanta we could get it to 
rock when we swung.) 
 
Not all of these were exclusive Campbell girl affairs; some in 
particular involved Robert, our next-door neighbor and my best friend 
(see above re: lazy socializing) - those tended to be the backyard ones. 
 Army involved Robert and the boys across the street who were younger 
than me, but older than Amy.  Their little sisters got involved as well 
- those were younger than Carey.  The boys would fight over who got to 
be General, Lieutenant, etc. and Robert & I would be the drill 
sergeants.  That left the little girls to be the privates, and Robert & 
I would construct obstacle courses for the girls to run through.  That 
was about the level of our Army, because we really had noone to fight 
against. 
 
I enjoyed playing Indian Tribe, that mainly involved coming up with rain 
and snow dances and grinding mystic potions (I used this as cover to 
make pollen-laden concoctions that I would ingest - so that I would get 
hay fever and stay out of school for a day) out of chives and whatever 
other likely object we found in the grass. 
 
Then there were the out-and-out games, one of which was 
sugar/salt/pepper that involved heaving people around in circles very 
fast and then letting them go.  They had to freeze how they landed.  
This then evolved into an animated statues game in which the people thus 
thrown were the statues, and 2 people would be left over - one a statue 
salesman, the other a potential buyer.  One would push a button on the 
statue (or just pretend to push a button, I think) and the statue would 
come to life, doing ridiculous things. 
 
Now, I bet you're wondering "Where are the toys?" Because indeed none of 
the above involved any specific toy (except, of course, for that little 
tykes blue plastic wagon that we pulled our mystic stone around in).  
Sure, we had props like office supplies Dad had brought home (once I got 
blank real estate contract from Career Day, so we got to play real 
estate agent for awhile).  Let's see - I remember playing with Barbie at 
my Grandma Cook's - she had some garage sale Barbie clothes, Barbies 
that had a precarious hold on their heads, and a Barbie airplane 
play-suitcase (it was a "suitcase" that opened up to show the interior 
of an airplane.  There was a cart and some other airplaney things).  I 
believe I played terrorist with that set, but I'm not sure.  I do 
remember playing airplane in our old Chevy station wagon - though we 
could play airplane only if we were coming home from the grocery store.  
There was something about taking food out of the bags, passing them 
around, and then putting it back into the bags.  If Dad was driving, 
then we'd be playing Star Trek, and I was always the navigator. 
 
Hmmm, oh yeah, toys.  Let's see.  Well, we had plenty of board games.  I 
liked Go to the Head of the Class, my first trivia game, but even at 
that age I could do pretty well at Trivial Pursuit.  Once my family 
played Monopoly in the kitchen and we videotaped ourselves doing this.  
I have no idea why we thought it would be a good idea to do this.  We 
had a speak & spell, but we mainly used it to terrorize the dog.  The 
hamster was a rather fun toy for a while.  We'd squish his balls around 
(don't squirm, Rosie (yeah, it was a =he=.  Think Rosie Grier) didn't 
feel any pain (or get any jollies from what we could tell) - he took it 
like a man... well, a male hamster) or set him on the arm of the couch 
while we were watching TV and say he was watching TV (he was sleeping).  
But the most fun thing to do with Rosie was to get him to fill up his 
pouches with lots of seeds, put him under the bathroom drawers, 
countdown from 10, then open the top drawer into which Rosie had crawled 
and had expelled all the seeds. 
 
Now just think about how I and my sisters turned out.  Pretty well, 
according to the usual criteria of the U.S. (okay, I haven't gotten a 
real job yet, but you must hold me in =some= esteem to have read thus 
far.  Either that or you have =alot= of time to waste on reading stuff 
by people you don't respect in which case I don't care about your 
opinion of me.)  A lot of our play would come across many of today's 
parents as "non-constructive".  We didn't take lessons (unless we 
specifically asked for them.  I remember taking a typing class in 6th 
grade as one of those community college dealies.  60 wpm baybee!), we 
didn't play organized sports (Amy played softball for a year, I think), 
we weren't doing anything self-improvement wise.  We were just making 
stuff up.  We weren't even necessarily using toys (okay, I will fess up 
to having a few dolls -- they were Strawberry Shortcake dolls (I know I 
had Lemon Merengue...), but they were mainly used as stand-ins for 
regular people, esp. in fighting against G.I. Joe, He-Man, or the 
Transformers (or what was that knockoff?  I think Robert had the 
knockoff ones)), but we were just farting around.  I got all my homework 
done at school or on the bus, and there was about only one hour of TV I 
was interested in -- Ripley's Believe It or Not (=nothing= like the 
current incarnation.  The content is different, and they don't have Jack 
Palance).  Was I going anywhere with this? 
 
hmmm. 
 
Anyway, you can see my mind still pretty much works the same way now as 
it did then.  I just kind of mess around until dinner time. 
 
It's dinner time.