USE YOUR IMAGINATION

Because I was the youngest for five and half years, I didn't always have my older sisters around to play with. They were in school and during the summer had their own friends.  There were several girls my age that lived on my street and we played together on a regular basis.  When they weren't available, it was up to me and my imagination to entertain myself.

My mother, being a seamstress, had a large mason jar full of buttons.  There were buttons of every shape, size, and color.  Some were just plain old buttons off my Dad's dress shirts.  Some were sparkly with rhinestones.  But I loved playing with those buttons.  After climbing up in my mother's sewing closet to get the button jar, I'd take the jar into the dining room where I pulled some of the Reader's Digest Condensed Books off the shelf below the counter to the kitchen.  The books had various cover designs and a solid color spine.  I'd lay the books down flat on the floor to make a house or a school.  The solid color spines were the hallways.  Buttons from my mother's button jar became people who attended the school or lived in the house made of books.

I was very particular about which buttons were the parents, adults, boys and girls.  The large buttons were grownups. Dark colored buttons were always boys.  Sparkly, pretty or pastel colored buttons were always girls. The smaller the button, the younger the child it represented. I could play for hours with my make believe button families.  On the few occasions that my older sisters would try and join me in my make believe, they'd get frustrated because I would tell them "That button isn't a boy, it's a girl".  "That one's a grown up, not a kid."  It was all very clear to me.  But I don't think they could ever inside my head to figure out my very, specific system.

To switch it up, sometimes, I'd get my father's box of Dominos and use them for my make believe families. Again, I knew exactly which Dominos were boys, girls, grown ups and kids. All it took for me to entertain myself was my imagination.