MetaChat - Childhood fantasies

I know this thread will swiftly evolve into something else, but here goes: as a kid, I used to fantasize about being locked in the library overnight either alone or with a few good friends. Hour upon hour of wandering the moonlit stacks at free will. I just knew it would be absolute heaven.

Yours?

posted by Frisbee Girl 22 August | 16:33

I used to want to be a horse. I would crawl around on all fours and pretend to gallop up the stairs. I also wanted to be invisible with the power to pass through walls. Actually, I wouldn't mind that now either.

(Speaking of library fantasies: when I was young my mother told me that heaven was whatever I wanted it to be and I decided that heaven was a huge library filled with books that held the answers to everything.)

posted by LeeJay 22 August | 16:38

When I was a kid, I used to dream that "they" would invent a candy that would make people smarter. Then you wouldn't have to go to school, I figured.

What an idiot.

posted by mcgraw 22 August | 16:42

Punching Brooks Coffeen in the nose so hard his head flew clean off. Over and over again.

posted by yhbc 22 August | 16:42

I fantasized about being a spy. My friends and I would make reconnaisance missions around the perimeter of a neighbor's yard. (They were old and had an immaculate lawn protected by a fence, and they yelled at us, so of course they were evil.) We'd imagine we saw movement, and pretend to be invisible and taking pictures with our spy cameras.

posted by me3dia 22 August | 16:43

I just used to wish I lived in a cottage by the sea with my cats and too many books to ever read in my life.

I can't see that the fantasy has changed much, except that I'd probably add an internet connection :)

posted by gaspode 22 August | 16:47

Oh yeah. I used to imagine I was a famous painter. I used to make mud "paint" from dirt in the driveway and use branches from our spruce tree to paint rocks with it. I killed hours and hours that way.

posted by LeeJay 22 August | 16:49

I wanted to be either a member of the mafia or tom sawyer. These are hopes and dreams I still mourn...

posted by Mrs.Pants 22 August | 16:49

I don't know if my thinking I could fly as a fifth-grader counts as a fantasy, as I was utterly convinced I could.

Also in fifth grade I fantasized about OP shorts, brain surgery, and a big-eyed, brown-haired girl named Amy.

posted by Hugh Janus 22 August | 16:49

I had tons of fun childhood fantasies. I wanted to hide out in a museum a la Claudia and Jamie in From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I wanted to live in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. I wanted to be able to draw pictures on the sidewalk and jump into them like in Mary Poppins. (Speaking of Mary Poppins, my friend and I used to go outside with our umbrellas on windy days to see if we too could fly.) Dang, were all my fantasies based on pieces of literature? : )

posted by sisterhavana 22 August | 16:58

I was always poking around in the backs of cabinets, etc. convinced I would find a secret passageway.

posted by sophieblue 22 August | 17:01

Oh hell and I devoted hours to refining my three wishes.

posted by gaspode 22 August | 17:03

I wanted to be able to shrink myself at will. I played "the small game", where I lay down in the grass and imagined myself a quarter inch tall, climbing over fields of moss, sitting on toadstools, dressed in flower petals. (Okay, maybe I still do that sometimes.)

Also, I really really really wanted a talking horse.

posted by Specklet 22 August | 17:15

I'm really disturbed that I can't recall any childhood fantasies. I know I had them. I think maybe I mostly just read, and the books were essentially my fantasies. I know that when I was in the hospital, I fantasized that my mom would unexpedectly show up and take me home.

posted by kmellis 22 August | 17:21

kmellis, as a kid and under those circumstances, that was likely an incredibly powerful fantasy and one worthy of note.

posted by Frisbee Girl 22 August | 17:32

In the harsh Manitoba winters, I always pretended to be riding a taun-taun (those half-horse thingies at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back) to school. I used to gallop down the street making the taun-taun noises.

When I was really little (5-ish), I used to wear red shorts and pretend I was Mawgli from the Jungle Book, and I always used to have to rescue my Miss Piggie stuffed toy from peril.

Now, I just fantasize about having money. Being an adult sux.

posted by Quartermass 22 August | 17:39

I used to wish I got the cloth-mommy instead of the wire-mommy.

posted by Capn 22 August | 17:44

I wanted to be a stuntman, and then an actor when I realised the stuntmen sometimes die doing stunts. Me and my friends used to make up TV shows including channel idents at the begining and everything - we were nothing if not precise.

posted by dodgygeezer 22 August | 18:00

I put myself inside the plot of every book I read. Actually, I still do that.

posted by cali 22 August | 18:12

kmellis, as a kid and under those circumstances, that was likely an incredibly powerful fantasy and one worthy of note.

Yeah. That experience screwed me up. Tip to parents: don't leave your child alone in a hospital (in a group ward) hundreds of miles away from you for weeks at a time. Anyway, you're right and that's why I mentioned it. I don't really recall ever, shall we say, furiously fantasizing during my childhood except during that time. Otherwise, as I said and like cali, the books I read from very early on were my fantasy life.

And, um, by the way, I'll go back to reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Palladin of Souls now, which I just started a couple of hours ago.

posted by kmellis 22 August | 18:33

How about during adolescence? Once I began to fall in love with girls, I had a very strong fantasy life in that regard. Not (just) sexual fantasies, but romantic fantasies such that an adolescent boy might experience. I spent eighth and ninth grades hugely, obsessively infatuated with a particular girl and, hell, those fantasies still echo in my subconscious. Here fantasy connects strongly with yearning, which is a subtext I see in Frisbee Girl's post and many of the responses which follow. Yes?

posted by kmellis 22 August | 18:42

Go with it at amy age, even current. A yearning, a draw towards something or a fully developed fascination with the fantastical that leads to an inspiration or focus. If it sparks something, run with it. I'm not playing hard and fast with rules here.

posted by Frisbee Girl 22 August | 18:51

cali, I still do that and I don't think I'll ever get away from it and still get bummed out when good books are done. I just feel adrift for a bit.

I also still wish for the ability to fly, or at least to float and hover. Especially living in SF where everyone and their dog seems to have these amazing secret gardens tucked from sight.

On preview, that 'amy' in the first line above should be 'any'. Yeah.

posted by Frisbee Girl 22 August | 19:01

I used to fantasize that people liked me.

posted by dg 22 August | 19:40

people love you, dg! *gives big hug to dg, and everyone*

I used to wish I got the cloth-mommy instead of the wire-mommy.
*spits coffee all over screen* : >

running away was a big one of mine, partly Mixed-Up Files related like Sis, and partly some other book about some kid who ran away to Alaska or something and camped out. And most books made me daydream about being in them (i still do that).

posted by amberglow 22 August | 19:52

Books and movies: I still have dreams where I am interacting with the characters. (much like the mecha dreams, no?)

posted by gaspode 22 August | 20:17

I wanted to hide out in a museum a la Claudia and Jamie in From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

God I loved that book. Are we too old to all move into a museum? Let's do it!

posted by jrossi4r 22 August | 20:53

I used to dream of being a magician and, kid you not, a realtor. I was a very strange child.

But now that I think of it, both dreams have come somewhat true because a) I'm a property manager and landlord and b) the number of really cute guys who have been throwing themselves at me since I turned 30 has always been inexplicable to me, therfore it must be magic.

posted by WolfDaddy 22 August | 21:11

If we're thinking around grade 5, then ditto: magic. All kinds. I was picking up the strange books that my brother had left behind (Dungeons and Dragons). Leafing through lists of spells was my bedtime reading. For a game that was -- at the time -- designed for uni students, I didn't understand a whole lot, but I quite liked the spells and memorized every detail.

posted by dreamsign 22 August | 21:37

I had a crush on Kimmy Gibbler. There, I said it.

posted by Eideteker 22 August | 21:44

Like sophieblue, I was always hopeful of encountering secret passageways, & in particular there were some mirrors in our house which I imagined might become ways out that I could crawl through to someplace else.

posted by misteraitch 23 August | 03:16

Telekinesis. I could fly, beat the hell out of people I didn't like, and just all around do things other people couldn't... without lifting a finger.

As a kid I remember having this dream where somebody was shooting a machine gun or somesuch at me, and I redirected the bullets at a 90-degree angle into a solid concrete wall.

Yeah, I had self-esteem issues. Still do.

posted by quantumetric 23 August | 19:42

I fantasized I lived with a normal family.

posted by deborah 24 August | 14:30

22 August 2005