So last night I had a dream about Coos.

Coos are these:

Coos were a Coos were beings my friend G.E. and I came up with in kindergarten and developed over the course of a couple years in elementary school. When we became these different beings, we entered into this entire kingdom/social structure we had developed along with them. He was king, I was queen. At the height of the Coo’s popularity, we had practically our entire first grade class (22/23 kids) plus a lot of kids from 2nd and 3rd grade.

My and G.E.’s popularity paralleled that of our game (though it certainly wasn’t a game to us; it was life).

And then came the inevitable decline. I remember the exact moment things went wrong and I could recite it minute-for-minute to you as if it happened yesterday, but I’m not going to. It’s a very depressing memory and I don’t feel like going into my little pit of despair today, so let’s just skip over it.

In the end, the popularity of Coos began to decline after its height in first grade. By the time fourth grade was over, I was the only true Coo left. But regardless of their relatively short-lived existence (though I guess four grades is a LONG time to a little kid), Coos were an impactful part of my life. I’d written over 10 journals’ worth of stories about them, three or so 70-page “novels” about them, and had a myriad million art projects surrounding them (I even made a big 3D one out of clay once).

I don’t think about them often, mainly because I’m rarely (if ever) in contact with anyone who WAS a Coo way back in the ‘90s (holy freaking crap, I sound old now). So it was strange to dream about them.

Strange indeed.