I lived in Fresh Meadows Queens and we had an enormous group of boys and girls who would play together after school for hours and hours. We created an elaborate ongoing saga based on the TV show Lost in Space. We each had steady roles (I was Penny), a boy named Steven was my space monkey.

Our game wasn’t based on the episodes, but our characters were from the show. We’d create our own experiences. The guy who played Don the pilot and the girl playing the older sister (what was her name?) absolutely had a relationship going, but we were kids so, what would you call it? Whatever it was, the roles gave us the freedom to play out what we wanted to do and say in real life.