I had my granddaughters, Lyla and Wren with me the other night while their folks were out. Baby-sitting is a ridiculous term for what I do with them; mostly it’s hanging out with Taco Bell. Don’t judge me, I’m the grandmother.

Anyway, Wren was playing school, while we waited for Lyla to get out of dance. She explained to me, as we gathered office supplies from the bucket I keep for just that purpose, that she had a world of imaginary friends who would be her students, and that they were with her right then, all around the room. “Really,” she said, gesturing to the horde, “It’s a galaxy of imaginary friends.” And she meant it.

First I loved that she used the word GALAXY, but mostly I loved that she can use her imagination and doesn’t have to rely on screens for her entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, she can get fully engrossed in some nail salon game on my phone if needed. But she is good at make-believe.

So I told her about growing up on Forestridge Dr. in Lake Highlands, with Karen, Minda (her name was Melinda, but I never once called her that), Stevvi (that was her actual name), who were all closer in age to me, and my younger sister Carol, and her friends JoBeth and Kathy. My baby sister Leigh, sadly, and the other little sisters Suzie and Margi, were too little to play. They came of age just as I was hitting junior high and lost my ability to pretend.

My brother Ted and his friends were around, too, but they never played with us, as they were off doing whatever boys did in the summers of the early 60s. (See my family above in 1960. I wish I had pictures of all of us as kids. I think they exist, but haven’t surfaced. Maybe if any of you see this, you can send me pics. )

And those summers were epic. We would gather early, saddle up our imaginary horses in our imaginary barn and spend the day riding the imaginary range of Forestridge, up to the top of the hill and back down and over into the keyhole and back down. It was a lot of range. There was always drama on the Bucking Horse Ranch. Our rival, the Rocking Horse Ranch, was always up to no good: stealing horses and such. (I watched a lot of Saturday morning TV.) They would rustle; we would ride, galloping like the wind to rescue our stock.

Sometimes natural disasters befell us. Horses would fall over a branch, which prompted that rider to switch to another horse in her stable. Snakes were also prevalent on the ranch, if not on actual Forestridge, and they would spook one of the horses, and the rest of us would take off in hot pursuit, until we caught the hapless rider and reined her horse to a stop. It was all very exciting.

There were rodeos on bikes, too, which were bridled with ropes and ready for our trick riding events.

Once or twice we walked “a fer piece” to the White Rock Stables on Goforth and (unthinkable now) went into the barn and pet the horses, the velvety feel of their muzzles burned into my hand even now.

Somedays we sat on our steps and wrote out the names of our horses. Lady Lucy and Lucky Red were my “leads,” one from an episode of Sky King, the other from an Archie’s comic book. I bet the others remember theirs as well. Carol was too little to be very creative, so we told her to just use what she saw around her. Her leads were Step 1 and Step 2. Telephone was also in her stable.

Lest you think we were one-trick ponies, we also played Barbies and tag like other kids, The boys joined us for evening games of hide-and-seek. And a couple of summers we mounted plays for the neighborhood, one was space-themed as I recall.

In fact my last memory of us was when I was 12 and beginning to age out. We decided to put on 101 Dalmations for the neighborhood. Gutsy, sure. We recruited kids from streets one and two over. During some chaotic practice or other on our back porch, my mother called me into the house and told me that if I didn’t quit bossing everyone around, I wouldn’t have any friends.

It hadn’t occurred to me I was bossy, but it was probably true. Anyway, we never did get enough kids to do 101 Dalmations. And I went to 7th grade.

You know it was probably only a few years that we played “horses.” But how incredibly important those years are to me. I have spoken to the others and they feel the same. Pure, “unbridled” imagination, prancing around in little girls’ heads, galloping off into long summer days.

A galaxy of imagination.