Inheritance...

Watching my daughter, Chynna and her cousin, Cailee, play- or "hang out" as they call it nowadays- makes me wax nostalgic for my best friend growing up. My cousin, Tanya.
Chynna and Cailee were playing "Stacey Styles", a fashion design company. Drawing pictures of the latest styles for the catwalks of Paris and London and all the other fashion like places that exist in the world.
Tanya and I would play something similar in our youth. Except, Tanya would take it to the extreme. The girl would create a storyboard for each style we drew, she would tape it to the paneled walls of her bedroom and when the show would take place, each of us would take our turn busting out onto the catwalk. Literally, we came out of the closet. (That is not a euphemism for anything, we literally pushed open the closet door in our designs.)
My aunt would give us all of her old dresses and pantsuits (yes, I said pantsuit) shoes and handbags. I even remember a wig or two popping up there somewhere. We would put together all of these fantastic outfits of gabardine and polyester and other synthetic fabrics and display our creations to each other, while the one not on the "catwalk" would snap pictures and cheer or do the announcement of what the other was wearing.  It was like the real thing.
Eventually, we would tire of the fashion world and its drama and move on to different avenues. One of our favourite things to play was "office." Yes, office. Grab a couple of old phones (you know, the kind that were actually attached to the wall and had cords attached to the handset?!?) a pad of paper and some pens and make appointments for our eternally busy boss. Most of the time we would play Simon and Simon.( I don't think many of you out there remember that show so, google it.) Taking information for cases and giving them to our "husbands" Aj and Rick. AJ was the cute one and Rick was the funny one. I always got AJ.
Recently, she pointed out to me that I married a blue-eyed blonde with the initials A.J.- fate?!? I call it so.
Oftimes, if Big Sister was with us, we would play "Escape to Witch Mountain" or "The Sound of Music" and many other movie related scenarios.
We used to play a LOT of Wonder Woman (me as Wonder Woman because I was older and she as Wonder Girl, for obvious reasons) and Bionic Woman and our favourite, Charlie's Angels. Big Sister was Kelly (yeah the hot Jacklyn Smith character even tho Big Sis was blonde), Tanya was Jill (Farrah Fawcett's cutesy character) and I had to be Sabrina- the brainy one. Needless to say, I did all the planning and initiating of saving some poor unfortunate soul or really bad guy. The other two basically ran around pointing their fingers like guns yelling "Freeze!" (They always got more camera time...because they obviously looked better in swimsuits.)
I have handed down all my old bridesmaid dresses to my daughter to use as playclothes. I mean, seriously, who the hell ever said "You can wear it again!" We all know that we hang the ugly thing in the back of the closet in hopes of forgetting we ever had to wear such garments. don't get me wrong, some of the dresses were lovely...for the year, 1989 to 1999. Like the Barney purple dress I had to wear for Baby Sister's wedding when I was 9 months pregnant. The only thing I was missing was a green felt circle on my tummy and I would have BEEN the horrid purple dinosaur. However, to my little sister, it was a lovely shade of grape and the dress was comfortable, I however was swollen and looked like a tick about to pop. So, now it graces the tote of my daughter's playclothes and is, I think, used as a tent.
But I digress, I was talking about playing or pretending.
Growing up, I always had an awesome playmate. One that would play the same things because we liked the same things! Occasionally, we would have a Kool Aid stand at the end of the block (Half Price!!!), make mud pies in the backyard kiddie pool (put a little water in and you mix it all up), or ride Barbie RVs down Third street (sorry Mom). We managed to come through it mildly unscathed but no broken bones.
I don't have to worry so much about that with my daughter. She is pretty timid when it comes to being adventurous.
And then...there is my son....which is a WHOLE other story.