My sister and I never understood her obsession. Dolls? Lame. Barbies? No way. Who wants to play with a weird-looking lady?
Especially when there were model horses to anthropomorphize!
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| Specifically, Breyer horses! |
Model horses were to my sister and me what Barbies were to my (misguided) friend. We were obsessed with them. My sister and I had at least a dozen each. They had names, individual personalities, and complex relationships with the other horses.
Our model horses went on adventures, formed cliques, fought with each other and later made up. The young ones would misbehave and get grounded, and then sneak out of the stable to roam the mountains (the bookcase) with their friends.
It was like a soap opera, but for horses! (okay, we were sort of weird kids)
We played with our horses for hours on end ... until one day we didn't find it as fun anymore. We began to see the model horses as plastic figurines, instead of the real live adventurers they used to be in our heads.
In short, we grew out of it. We realized this as it was happening, and it saddened us. Eventually we packed the horses away and stopped telling each other stories about which colt was mad at which filly and why.
But you know what? I never stopped making up stories in my head. They began to star people instead of horses, but my character-creating roots are in those early whinny-filled sessions of adventure and make-believe.
I still have those horses in a box somewhere. I will never throw them away. I just wish I remembered all of their names!
What were you obsessed with as a kid?
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| If I'd lived during the Han Dynasty, this would have been my favorite toy. He would have had a taste for clover and a tendency to annoy his friends with recitations of poetry. The other horses would pity his bobbed tail. From here. |
9 comments:
I was never a horse girl or a Barbie girl for that matter. But I love to watch the races of the Triple Crown!
My sister and I were into Strawberry Shortcake dolls and built a little village for them. We were super reluctant to outgrow it-- it was sad. Then along came a little sister and we used her as the excuse to play again!
Most other things I played with as a kid was pretty tomboyish. GI Joe, cars, guns, etc. And I was big into tree climbing.
I used to love unicorns. I had posters, little statues, bookmarks...Yeah, looking back on it I can see I was a wee bit obsessed. :P
@ Connie - you know, I've never watched the Triple Crown, but it's on my list of things to do sometime!
@ Jo - It is sad when you realize you're outgrowing something, but how fun that you got to renew your playtime with your younger sister!
@ Alleged - Unicorns! I think I had a model unicorn too, but the other horses called him names because he was strange. They were very clique-ish! ;-)
I'm so with you--I liked the horses over the Barbies. I got given Barbies, though, by people who didn't know what else to get a little girl for a present.
I used to like building forts out of these old couch cushions. I often made them into troll caves, and to make it clear that's what they were, I pulled the heads off the Barbies and hung them around the entrance. I think I must have seen a picture in a fantasy book with a cave with shrunken heads.
I was just trying to be realistic!
...is that maybe too disturbing to admit publicly? >__>
I had a billion model horses, too! Me and my friends would play the same sorts of games. Too funny! I had some Barbies, too, which sometimes rode the horses. And lots of My Little Pony stuff.
@ meagan - haha I love the decapitated barbies around the fort!! And hey, writers are supposed to be disturbing ... er, I mean imaginative!
@ alexia - ah, you managed to get your barbies and horses to coexist peacefully :)
Last night, Rachel (she's 6 now) and I played with horses and barbies. It worked well until the wild cat came and decided to attack some of the horses and barbies, then the group was divided and things got rough for them. It reminded me of when I did the same thing at her age.
Hmm. I think the thing I was most obsessed with as a kid was books. And personally I was more of a Barbie girl than a horses girl...
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