Saturday, November 3, 2012

Games we play. Part 1. Everyday objects and dolls.



Looking back I'm feeling like a seventy year old and torturing my grandchildren with none ending stories about young and glorious days. Stories begin 'when I was young like you are, I used to...', 5 minutes later and no listeners at wide several kilometers range around, I find myself talking alone, enjoying good company and liking the topic. I know the narrative too damn well but don't mind to hear it and to tell it who counts what time again. The story of vivid childhood memories. Even understanding that my brains rewrite memories all the time again and again and everything looks much nicer then it really was, won't stop me from taking this road. I almost can smell, feel, hear and see it. And still I don't. It's just nervous signals trying to remind what is long time gone. When I was young almost like you are...





...I used to love games. I still do. It even looks like all I did all day long and all I wanted to do non stop for the rest of my life was playing. But here I can't give up to dirty tricks of my mind. I didn't play 24/7, because some of my hours were occupied by sleep, food, bath and bedtime stories, running to the shop for ice-cream or candies, watering plants, taking care of my toys, planning adventures, helping, thinking how to sneak that big ripe pear from neighbor's garden (sprouts of dark side), being in the way of adults, rolling my eyes when forced to sit still, picking mushrooms, asking too much questions, acting like a radar, don't missing the opportunity to say my valuable opinion about all questions to everyone who had ears. Happy-go-lucky childhood.



Days were long (my day consisted at least of 48 hours) and full of surprises and the only sadness was rain making me to be inside when I wanted to run out and about or illness when I had to stay in bed with pillows, napkins and disgusting cold medicine for couple of days or practically unimaginable thing for whole week! But even then it was possible to use my sick days for game advantage.


Almost enough with the rambling. And still it goes on. I played so many games that I hardly can count them. I played with so many objects that it's not possible for me to say exact number too. The most powerful and impressive games I remember were which me and (or) my partner in crime brother, invented with everyday objects like toothpaste tubes, deodorant, shampoo or perfume bottles, bars of soaps, buttons, sticks or coins. 
In my eyes the most weirdest here is toothpaste. There was a whole drawer full of tubes in our house and now I have an idea why. We didn't originate from sharks and didn't have more teeth then any other family. But it was obvious that we didn't need that much toothpaste. Soviet Union was at fault here. Shops were empty, there was nothing there, famous bread lines on every corner, so if you had connections and could put your hands on some stuff it didn't really matter if you needed it or not, you grabbed as much as you could.



Playing with everyday objects wasn't our little sad tale about not having any toys to play with but about craving something new and fresh so often that it wasn't possible to have new toys every time when we got sick of the old ones. We became inventors of our own game. Just to conquer the Moon all you needed was to take my grandmother's old huge wooden box full of buttons, sort them through, imagine that they are your private spaceships and you are there taking first steps and putting flag in the dust. The same story goes with coins. I see myself and my brother sitting at the table in my grandparents house, taking good real fabric handkerchiefs, folding them, collecting some old not used anymore Russian coins and building our own city right there on the table. Handkerchiefs were our cars, coins passengers and people of our city, streets the lines of tablecloth. Oh what times! We played for hours and hours. The table stayed that way until we had guests and all was disassembled. After guests our playing city was reinvented again, became even better and cycle continued until we got bored and switched to something better.



I loved to play with normal toys too: dolls and cars. But girls don't play with cars. Some do. I did. We had a rule with brother, that he plays with mine and I play with his toys for some time, so I ended up playing with cars. I had several dolls and at some point handmade doll emerged among others. My mother made (knitted) one for me. I loved to stand near and look over her shoulder and see how doll was born. Little by little it got head, body, legs, arms, mouth eyes and clothes. It was very precious to me and I don't have to say why. It so obvious - made by my mother just for me and nobody in the world had anything like it. Now things turned around, if I'm visiting my parents and making something there, my mother likes to sit next to me waiting and wondering what interesting will appear.



One day I was intrigued to try to create a doll myself. I tried that when I was little still with no luck. But now when I trained my making things muscle it was possible to make a doll and be satisfied with it. This doll in particular was inspired by one famous picture of little girl with impressive eyebrows and face expressions, which I have been seeing some year ago all over the internet (story tells how it caught my eye because of reminding of my very dear friend). I welcomed a bit grumpy new doll.


Picture by Kawashima Kotori

1 comment:

  1. Oh my little scratch-cat with dark eyebrows!!! So glad and honoured by you having the original :)

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