For the program guide

I was asked about childhood fantasies, for the program guide to the stage play of Peter and the Starcatchers (La Jolla Playhouse, beginning Feb 13th):

As a child I was surrounded by sorcery and magic. The kids in our Connecticut neighborhood were very close and over the years we formed a kind of secret club without ever calling it that. As the youngest of that club I was the guinea pig, the object of childhood "torture" like being tied up and left in the attic while the others dressed up as goblins and then raided the attic, scaring me half to death; once I was made to drink a green potion that I was told would kill me (it turned out to be 7-UP with green food coloring). This went on for many years. Ricky Hart, who lived down the street, wore capes and rode his bike around in the gloom of night making hooting noises. We were a strange bunch.
My fantasy back then, and perhaps it carried forward, was to be a spy. I would work on walking through the woods without making a sound; I would sneak around my house trying not to be noticed; at one point I had run wires throughout most of the house so it was "bugged" and connected to a tape recorder in my room. I'm not sure my parents ever found out about that. I wonder where those tapes are now?
But an ability I fantasized about, was, like my favorite early book, Harold and his Purple Crayon: to imagine and create a world. Harold could draw things that then came to life, and he stepped into that world. My mother was the artist. My father was a writer. I began using words in place of Harold's crayon--creating worlds where I could be the caped magician, the spy. And I, the writer, was of course, invisible. It's a fantasy world I still enter each day as I sit down in my office chair.
Ridley Pearson