What I learned from 'Attack Of The Killer Vegetables!' 🍅🍆🥕💥

The summer I was allowed to play outside my house, I discovered two things.

The first was that I quickly realised roller blading up and down my street on my own wasn't actually that exciting. It didn't take long to move through the thrill of independently being out in the world, the nervous buzz formed by moving aside for the occasional car soon fading and revealing that skating from number one to number 132 was quite repetitive.

I also learned that at the end of my street lived two Bigger Girls in the year above me at school. They were often out riding their bikes, or sitting on the curb together heads close in conversation as they chewed on gum, blowing out big, blue bubbles that popped into the air and onto their faces.

My second discovery was that I really, really wanted to be their friend.

This was a big thing for me, because up until that point I had been pretty content with my weekends of reading, drawing and playing Ecco The Dolphin, with the occasional parentally orchestrated visit to a friends house for tea. Suddenly this whole new world opened up in front of me, and I yearned to share packets of gum with them, and know what they were talking about in their hushed, secret conversations.

However, being the awkward kid I was, if I did catch their eye on my weekly 'blade session I would usually just offer up an uncomfortable smile as I diligently avoided making eye contact, staring hard at the road beneath my wheels.

As the summer holidays inched closer - marked off by my weekend solo adventures up to the top of the road and back again – you could feel the children on the local estates get progressively impatient to be set free for six glorious weeks of nothing.

At school my classroom felt restless and stuffy, the hot sun making sitting next to the window unbearable, and lunchtimes in the playground sweaty.

In a last ditch bid to keep the attention of 30 nine year olds who were well over the school year, my teacher set us a project. We each had to plan, design and create a board game (topic of our choice!) that we could bring in for the sacred Games Day at the end of the year and play with our classmates.

Being me, I got fully, properly, wholeheartedly into this.

I invented 'Attack Of The Killer Vegetables!' – a multiplayer table top game with the (possibly obvious from the title) premise that genetic modification had led to a world threatened by super sized, super mean vegetables.

I love that drawing this constituted as 'working'.

I spent days drawing out and colouring the board, illustrated individual playing cards that presented players with challenges or advantages, and handmade dozens of tiny counter pieces of tomatoes with angry, jagged teeth, or butternut squash with intimidating stances.

The night before Games Day I was still adding the final touches – writing out the instructions on illustrated paper, drawing my score cards – when my doorbell rang.

The Bigger Girls were at my doorstep, and they were asking my mum if I wanted to play out.

I walked to the door, my brain going like a super computer as I tried to weigh up my options and decide what to do.

On one hand, here was my much longed for invite into their secret street culture. I could see before me the possibilities of a summer of 'hanging out', maybe even increasing my (painfully low) coolness credits at school.

On the other hand...my game needed finishing.

It was important to me.

I had put a lot of time and effort into it, and I really wanted it to be player ready for Games Day.

So I choose my game. And watched the confusion on their faces as I explained that – at 9 years old - it was essential that I spent my evening completing a school project.

The next day I excitedly took in the - now complete - one and only copy of 'Attack Of The Killer Vegetables!', carefully packed into a cardboard box I had decorated with my best hand lettering and the baddest of my imagined vegetable medley of terror.

And no one in my class had made a game.

Or at least, made anything like the same amount of effort. Most had brought in a folded A4 sheet of paper with some biro drawings and a dice. Some hadn't even bothered and instead had grabbed a card game from home.

All my pride and excitement drained and were replaced with a realisation I'm sure a lot of you will recognise from childhood.

I realised I was different, and being different at 9 meant being wrong.

Plus, no one cared that much about 'Attack Of The Killer Vegetables!'. Despite all my efforts, it just didn't look that exciting next to tables of brightly coloured plastic games like 'Buckaroo' and 'Operation'.

I realised with a profound and painful sadness that I had sacrificed my one chance to be friend with the Bigger Girls for...nothing.

Just as I could felt tears moving from my throat and threatening to further embarrass me in front of my class, my super loyal best friend asked if we could play my game, and was met with my earnest and emotional 'yes please!'.

I wish I could tell you that 'Attack Of The Killer Vegetables!' was SO amazing and exciting that one by one my classmates were drawn in, ending with them all circling us and cheering me on as I defeated the Evil Pea Family and moved towards my victory.

But they didn't.

My best friend did get into it though, and told me she thought it was 'cool that I had made it all myself'...before politely suggesting we moved on to playing 'Connect 4'.

By the end of Games Day I felt ok.

I felt grateful my friend had 'got it' and played with me.

I felt a bit sad I had missed out on making new friends (only temporarily though, as of course I did get invited to play out by other people. I soon realised hanging out with unsupervised kids had too many Lord Of The Flies vibes for me. I quickly choose my own, less scary and more fulfilling 'playing in' life of art and reading).

And I felt really pleased I had finished my game. Because it was GOOD and I MADE IT.

So dear reader, why am I telling you my slightly tragic childhood tale of 'Attack Of The Killer Vegetables'?

🌟 Because sensitive creative people care deeply about their creations. 🌟

So I imagine a hefty chunk of you have similar childhood stories of sacrificing time with other kids to do your thing – or maybe going out to the park only to wish you'd stayed home while surrounded by teenagers who played with lighters and aerosol cans.

But also because I think a lot of us have sacrificed things over the years...maybe days with other kids, or later parties or dinner with friends...to finish our creative projects.

Maybe you once had the same, sore realisation in some 'core memory' style moment...

You were different, and being different meant being wrong.

Until...

Until we met the other kids like us, who also did weird things such as dedicate a week of their life to making a board game, or illustrating their own comic, or making their own clay figurines of Lord Of The Rings characters.

Until we found the arty kids to hang out with as teenagers, with badly dyed black hair and plastic bracelets, or the gamer kids, or the library kids.

Until we began to see that it wasn't weird, and was in fact superbloodycool to be different and creative.

Those feelings of shame can linger though, and pop up sometimes when we have to do something scary like tell our neighbour what we do for a job, or explain to a family member that we draw, write or make tiny worlds for (something close to) a living.

And that's where being around other super sensitive, strange, imaginative, creative, slightly socially uncomfortable people is powerful.

Much like the stars of my game, we need to find our peas-in-a-pod people.

That's why I started doing coaching for sensitive creatives, and it's why I run my free monthly Sensitive Creatives Meetups and show up every month, even though it's still a pretty tiny community.

So from one sensitive geek to another, I'm going to awkwardly ask you to share these events with anyone else you know who might benefit from these online sessions... and my Strange Kid stories.

And of course, if you would like to come along, you don't have to wait for me to knock and invite you! You can sign up for the May 23 Meetup, and all subsequent events, here:

Stay weird, caring and creative 😎

Eleanor 🌠

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