Playing Pretend Some More

I've mentioned that my favorite childhood pasttime was playing pretend. It wasn't until I hit middle school, and sixth grade, however that playing pretend got really GOOD.

I had a friend named Chris who was fun and creative. She read all the good fantasy and science fiction books, and we'd have fun making up stories. I would have sleepovers at her house a lot, and we'd act out scenes from books, or stories that we made up together.

The BEST game, though, was just after Galactica '79 came out. We were both big fans of the Battlestar Galactica tv show, so when they remade the series to actually bring the Galactica to earth, we were glued to the television set. The series was awful and didn't last long, but we were in sixth grade, and had no taste. We watched EVERY episode. The basic premise was that the Galactica arrived at present day earth, and the evil Cylons had followed. So instead of just beaming everyone down to the planet, they sent some of their soldiers to work on ways to safely integrate the Galacticans with the earth population. They did this by turning invisible and talking to brilliant scientists. Like I said, we had no taste.

Chris had the brilliant idea of a secret society of scientists who worked with alien technology far more advanced than current civilization. They had already made contact with other alien races, and had a secret government funded lab where they could work on their advanced projects. She called it the EX team. We were agents of the EX team, and our cover was to pose as middle school students in an ordinary American school. When the invisible Galacticans made contact with us, we ended up trying to save the world from Cylon invaders every lunch recess in the sixth grade.

Shooting Cylons at recess ended up not being the popular activity among the other girls at school- they preferred playing jump rope. I really didn't care. I was having a great time, and there was an endless line of boys who were thrilled to play Cylons or other EX team members. Nobody EVER had as much fun at recess than we did.

My daughter came home the other day telling me about a game they were playing at school where they all had secret superpowers and were fighting bad guys at recess. You go, girl.