My friends and I used to stage elaborate and completely extemporaneous plays with no audience except ourselves, the players. Each of us would take on the name and persona of some person from a book or movie and have incredible mash-ups of history, fantasy, science fiction and temporal dissonance. We would tell these incredible stories that developed as we played... sometimes these 'plays' would last from after breakfast til we were called in for lunch... then pick up again (sometimes with changes in cast and roles) til the streetlights came on and we were called in for dinner. We would range the whole neighborhood, into the orange groves nearby and to the school and park grounds closest to home. We rode our trusty steeds (bikes) around the area, climbed trees, hopped fences and staged very elegant sword fights all in the name of drama. Everything was very cinematic (we all had friends or family in the film industry including some of us kids)...
It was the most intense and memorable play of my childhood. Fond memories. I rarely see kids play pretend like that today. My son did a bit with a friend of his, (She was the Pirate Queen and he was Captain Swashbuckle in one repeated game they played), but those games were few and far between. I love seeing young (and old) folks and kids cosplaying because it is an off-shoot of playing pretend. I hope the 'art' of playing pretend never dies out. Perhaps my love of playing pretend is why I love roleplaying games so much. Dungeons and Dragons and games like it have been a mainstay of my life since 1974. I still play 2-3 times a week.
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