When I get stressed about work, relationships, or bills, I relax by speaking with my friends. One of my favorite conversation topics is childhood memories and games. Listening to my friends speak about the things they enjoyed while they were children always reminds me of my own childhood. My imagination takes me back in time to a place where life was much more fun and so much easier. There weren't any problems, reports, deadlines, clients, breakdowns, or taxes. Life was divided into school and no school, with only some homework that interrupted for a bit the cartoon shows and the games with your siblings, friends or cousins.



When I think about it, it makes me think of one of a song from one of Charlie Brown's movies: ?Maybe it's some kind of magic, that only little kids can do.? It certainly felt that way. Santa came all the way from the North Pole each year, fatal wounds could be cured with a kiss from mom, and even if monsters and pirates lurked around the house, you could always defeat them with the help of dad. On the other hand, there were no taxes, no telephone, electricity and gas bills, no overdue debts, no mortgage payments, no dating messages to decipher, no budgets, no holding on line, no commissions to pay, no calories to be counted, no light food, no hangovers, no worrisome medical tests, etc.

Of course, there's no point in trying to find a time travel machine and go back to the 70's again, but it's still relaxing to remember my childhood. Those were the days.

When I turned 7, my father decided to make an educated and literate child out of me. This meant substituting toys for books for the rest of my childhood. Although I eventually learned to love my books, at the time I felt the world was pretty much over. As any person who has kids knows, children learn to use their imagination to amuse themselves, using whatever they have at hand. In my case, that meant clothing. I would invite my friends over and we would play dress up games all the time. Although at first we only pretended to be mini versions of our mothers, my contact with books allowed me and my friends to eventually transform into princesses, courtesans, ballerinas, as well as child versions of Snow White, Wilma Flinstone, Cinderella and Smurfette. I like to think that it helped us stay close and develop our artistic abilities. The girl who selected our clothes grew up to be a fashion designer. Me? I'm a fiction writer.

Nowadays, things are different for little girls. They just connect to internet and go to a website that features dress up games. Cinderella and Snow White have been replaced by Hanna Montana and Sakura Card Captors. They dress up their new icons with dozens of virtual outfits, just by clicking the mouse pointer around the screen. They have it easier and they should. However, call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer it our way. It encouraged more relationship building between girls. I'm proud to say that a couple of the girls I used to play dress up games with are still a big part in my life, and they have helped me get over some of the most difficult events that have happened to me.