The Imaginary Family

Source: What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games And Pastimes
Category: PLAYING ALONE, AND GAMES IN BED



E. H. recommends for girls the "Imaginary Family" game. This is her
description of it:--"First you have to settle the names, ages, and
characters of your family, and then you can carry on their adventures
every night. One little girl who was devoted to books of travel, and
who loved to pore over maps and charts, used to travel with her family
every night in whatever country she happened to be interested in at
the time. Thus she and a favorite son, Pharaoh, traveled for a long
time in California, crossing every mountain-range by the proper
passes, exploring every valley, tracing each river to its source, and
so on. In the same way she traveled with her family is Central and
South America, the Malay Peninsula, and the South Sea Islands. Another
little girl who was very fond of adventure stories carried her family
through all sorts of perils by land and sea. At one time they were
shipwrecked and lived like the Swiss Family Robinson. At another
time they were exploring Central Africa, and traveled about with three
years' supplies in a gigantic caravan with fifty elephants. Yet
another little girl had for her family any characters out of books
that particularly fascinated her. Thus, when she was reading The
Heroes, her family was reduced to one daughter, Medea, a rather
terrible daughter, who needed a great deal of propitiating, and for
whose sake all other children had to be given up. Later on, when the
same child was reading Tales of a Grandfather, her family consisted
of three sons, Wallace, Bruce, and Douglas. (It is rather a good
thing, by the way, to have a very heroic family, especially if you are
at all inclined to be afraid in the dark, as they help to keep one's
courage up.) Two little girls, who lived in a clergyman's household,
had an imaginary poor family they were interested in, and they planned
about them every night,--how much the father earned, what their rent
was, whether the mother oughtn't to take in washing, whether the
eldest girl could be spared to go into service, and so on. When they
weren't allowed to talk at night they carried the family history on
independently and compared notes in the morning."


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