When I was seven I became friends with a boy across the street from our Costa Mesa home.  He was a little younger than I, and in no time we developed a close, sister-brother dynamic.  We played together frequently and there was as little delineation between what was boy play and what was girl play as there had been in my own solitary adventures.  His trucks mixed with my dolls, my toy cars mixed with his action figures.  Darth Vader and Barbie mingled peacefully.  Until they went to war in a flower bed behind the house.

I wasn’t insistent on the toy-mixing rule either.  When a girl came over to play and wanted a tea-and-dolls afternoon, that worked for me just as well.  My mind didn’t judge one type of play to be inherently better than the other.  My focus was adaptable, my tastes omnivorous.

return to the excerpts page

next chapter

previous chapter