It was great when it all began...

When did that magic moment come where roleplaying became a part of me ? I'm tempted to say "when I read the Mark Rein-Hagen article I mentioned in a previous posting". Searching my memories, though, reveals that it happened much earlier than that.

What we are talking about is the the moment when having the things we imagine for ourselves, enhanced through input from others, became part of our frame of reference for what is important in 'Reality'. For me that was on the beach at Skegness when I was about 6 or 7.

I had always been an 'imaginative' child. I had a very loving mother who made me clothes to dress up in - mostly mermaids, genies or Cinderella - and I was used to playing alone in a landscape generated entirely by my own imagination. What happened in Skegness was that I discovered that not all children had the facility inborn in them to 'Imagine' ! I was very shocked to make this discovery.

I played on the beach with two other children who were, I think, staying at the same hotel. I was happily raunching around in the sand, talking to imagined people and creatures, when I realised they didn't understand what was going on. That was my moment. I taught the other girls to Imagine, so that we could play together better, and knew from then on that this wonderful gift of playing inside ones own brain was specific to me as a person and something I could share and teach to others for mutual benefit and amusement.