The Dog
So you know about the dog carrier thing. Sure, I ended up a little bruised, but the whole experience only last about five minutes, which was a lot better than the time I was chained to the dog house for a half an hour. Our Springer Spaniel, Senna, lived exclusively outside. She was a farm dog and had a stinky, spider dwelling, wooden dog house to call her own. Normally she was chained up to the tree near it, but when my mom mowed the lawn, she would let Senna loose. It was during our dog's free time that my sister decided I should play puppy.
"Get in the dog house, Jo jo."
"But it's dark in there and it stinks!"
"You have to pretend to be my dog or I won't play with you."
Immediately I began to cry. I gathered my courage and two pairs of boots. I had on the ones covering my feet, but I convinced Jess to let me put her boots on my hands, so that way my "paws" wouldn't get all nasty when I went inside the pooch's home. Jessy put one of Senna's old collars on me and snapped me on to the wire cable. There was no escaping it now. I went into the dog house, tried to lay down among the matted hair, stuck out my tongue panting, and wagged my butt like I had a tail. If I was going to be a dog, I was going to be a good dog.
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| Four boots and walking in dirt. |
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| Eat your heart out, Lassie. |
Pretending to be a duck was by far the best animal I've ever impersonated. Being a duck was actually fun, minus the part where I was fed stale crackers. It was a hot July day and my mother had filled up the tiny blue kiddie pool with water for us so that we could splash around. Jess and I put on our swim suits and hopped on in. I was a duck for a while, quacking and ruffling my feathers. But then I got a really brilliant idea. Or my sister did, I'm not sure who it was. All I know is there is photo-graphical evidence of me wearing yellow rubber dish washing gloves on my feet, standing in a water like a lemon colored duck with webbed feet. I was by far the most inventive human-duck you ever did see.
When the Lion King came out, I became totally obsessed. It may have had more to do with my already developed crush on Jonathon Taylor Thomas that it had to do with The Circle of Life and my belief that it is important to grow up to do great things. At any rate, I loved imagining to be Lion King characters. The very best part was that my sister always let me be Simba, due to the fact that I had a shoulder length brown mane with golden sun streaks in it. I have very thick hair, and I would shake it around to accompany my ferocious roar.
This one time, Jessamy was pretending to be Rafiki. She was really into Rafiki because he had an exotic accent and carried around an awesome stick. My sister had found a similar stick in the woods behind our house and had attached a few stink balls* to it with twine from a hay bale. It looked very aboriginal.
*when I say stink balls, I mean those things that drop from Oak trees and have green must in them.
Jessamy and I were re-enacting scenes when it came time for me to receive a bit of advice.
"It's all in de past!" Jess yelled, then whacked me on the head with her giant stick.
The intention was to knock some sense into me, but all it did was knock me senseless. When I came to, I immediately began to cry and went screaming to my mother, clutching my skull. I told her what happened and she confiscated Jessy's Rafiki stick. Jess was very bitter about it, because the Rafiki stick lay unobtainable on top of the freezer in the garage for the following two months of summer.
Yes, the Rafiki stick did instill wisdom. My sister learned never to whack her baby sister on the head even if she wasn't trying to be mean. If you ever see my sister in person, you should say to her "So...tell me about the Rafiki stick." Even though it happened 17 years ago, I'm sure the memory is carved clearly in the tree that is her mind.
The Horse
My sister always wanted a horse, and until she got a real one, she forced me to be her equine. She liked to do things like feed me carrots, which sounds all fine and dandy, but not when the carrots have been plucked straight out of the garden and still have dirt and worms hanging on them.
I acted my part as horse both inside the house and outside. Jessy's favorite thing to do was to lunge me (she didn't try to ride me that often because she didn't want to hear me say she weighed too much). When a horse gets lunged, it basically means it is on a long rope and you make it run in circles around you for exercise. Lunging on the carpet on all fours is not really a pleasant experience, as it caused my knees to bleed. Lunging on all fours is also not an effective way to lose weight, and if you are trying to get in shape then I suggest running in circles on your two feet, rope tied to your head is optional.
Jess also made me walk on my hands and knees outside in the grass. Sometimes she tied rope to me and made me pull the red Radio Flyer wagon. When this happened, she'd sit inside the "carriage" and whip my butt with a stick if I wasn't going fast enough. I'm not exactly sure where my mother was in all of this. I feel like she should have intervened. Thank God my sister got a real pony when she was 11 years old.
The Cat
Surprisingly enough, when we played Cat and Owner, I did not have to be the cat. This was because my sister adored cats and wished she was one. She'd make me do things like scratch her between the ears, rub her tummy while she purred, or feed her a bowl of milk on the floor. This was by far the easiest pretending I ever had to do, and I welcomed it with open arms. Whenever Jessy suggested an animal impersonation game, I would first ask her if she wanted to pretend to be a cat. This usually bought me a little time before I had to sleep in the dog house, quack, get hit on the head, or have bloody knees.
Yes, I spent much of my childhood pretending to be something other than a homo sapien. You can see that I went to great lengths to convince people to spend time with me, something I still do today. Only difference is, I walk on my own two feet and no longer eat dirt.
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