Make Believe

I know that each generation before me has uttered these words: "things were better in our time." I also know that my generation and each generation that will come after me will also utter these words. It is true that as the younger generation takes shape, I, as my parents and my parents' parents, look at the future generation in disbelief at the things they like. Their clothes, their music, their idea of fun, it is all but a mystery to me.

I remember when I was little, me and my best friend ran in between the concrete and cars of the parking garage in my building, but we saw so much more than that. We saw adventures. We pretended to be super heroes in the world of She-Ra. We saw a land of magic. We pretended to be Katy Mahoney, from Lady in Blue, and with our finger in the right position, all of a sudden we were armed police officers fighting against crime. We played house with our stuffed dogs and pretended they were our children. In order to justify the fact that we had dogs as children, we explained that our husbands were werewolves, which to us sounded totally plausible.

I spent the best times of my childhood with her, creating, imagining, dancing, and developing crushes on cute boys.

I look at the generation before me and it saddens me their loss of innocence at such a young age, the loss of imagination and the ability to play make believe. Their desire to buy things instead of creating their own toys, as I did in my childhood.

My friend passed away at the tender age of 19 of multiple organ failure, but she left with me the most beautiful gift: the ability to dream.

I am not very good writing tutorials,  but I wanted to share one of our favorite projects: our own movie theater.

You will need an old shoe box, paper cutter, tape, white printing paper, markers (or crayons, colored pencils), ruler, and 2 unsharpened pencils.

First, using your ruler draw a 3 x 3 inch square (or a bigger size, depending on the size of your shoe box). Using your paper cutter knife, cut the square out.

Along both sides sides of your box, cut out little holes that are wide enough to fit your pencils comfortably.

Get your white printing paper and fold it in half and cut it, using your paper cutter (or scissors). Once you have as many strips of paper as you want, tape them together.

Leaving about 3 inches of blank paper, draw your little story on the strip of paper, one frame at a time. Then tape each end of the strip of paper to your pencil so you can roll your paper up and down.

You can create all types of little stories and decorate your movie theater box as simple or as elaborate as you want. I remember my best friend and I used to spend hours and rolls and rolls of paper on our stories. We would have presentations for our friends, where we narrated our adventures in the most enthusiastic way.

She was the one who taught me to make this movie theater. And I will always love her.