Throughout my childhood I loved playing with my dolls. It was one of my favourite activities in the world, and whenever I wasn’t playing with my friends, I was found sitting with my dolls, engaged in a long, emotional drama with them. I always improvised the story, and as I went along with each new storyline, I smiled and cried with my characters. To such an extent, I was involved in my dolls’ drama.
My little brother, on the other hand, had little interest in dolls. Instead, he was a lover of buses and had a large collection of toy buses at home. Whenever he was alone, he was found sitting with his toy buses, carefully moving them around in the room mimicking the buses in the real world. What was most important to him was that all the buses moved around the room with precision. It usually didn’t involve much story.
When I was five, one morning, I was playing with my dolls as usual sitting on the floor of my family’s tiny half-dilapidated apartment. It was another emotional story, and after some time, I needed to take a break to reflect upon what had happened so far.
As I put down my dolls and became silent, I heard somebody else’s voice nearby. It was my brother. He was sitting across from me with his toy buses. But today, the way he was playing was different from usual. His toy buses seemed to be playing a drama. Being curious what kind of story was unfolding, I watched and listened carefully.
There were a few buses placed on top of a large tin box. They seemed to be on an adventure together when suddenly, one of them fell off the edge of the tin box, an imaginary cliff. I watched the other buses with all my attention, waiting for them to say something to the one who fell off the cliff.
“Ooh!” My brother moved one of the buses on the clifftop and said. “Are you okay?”
I quickly looked at the bus that had fallen off the cliff. Surely, he or she must be injured because it was quite a big fall.
“Yes, I’m all right.”
The bus at the bottom of the cliff replied.
“You should come back.” A bus on the clifftop said. “Do you need help?”
Of course, please help the bus, I thought. I was eagerly waiting for the next line, when my brother noticed me watching and stopped talking. He smiled shyly and didn’t want to continue anymore as long as I was watching.
So, I returned to my dolls to resume their emotional drama. My brother’s buses also resumed their conversation. However, soon I became so absorbed in my own story that I didn’t hear anything else in the room anymore.