I covered my studios floor with game boards, block fixtures, and varied toy people to create a performing art piece that goes far deeper then childhood memories. Because of a devastating event a decade ago, my childhood was robbed from me. I was forced to grow up much faster then my third grade classmates, and my mother and I switched roles. I took care of the adult, emotionally that is. Not only do I feel my childhood was robbed, I feel children in general are forced to grow up much faster then they truly want to. Societies pressures and the governments regulations, set many a year ago, force humans to take life in steps, and childhood is only half a step. We long to play manhunt on hot summer nights with only fireflies guiding our paths, we long to play with dolls, we long to use our barely developed brains in a match of battle ship, but we are only allotted a short amount of time to do so in peace. We are taught to grow up in a split second because that's what is seen as acceptable in society. But children are fragile and should be allowed to grow at the pace they want, and more importantly play games and dress up dolls for as long as they please. We wonder why so many adults are mad, depressed, delirious, and down right crazy, but it's because so many of us are forced to live at a pace SOMEONE ELSE set. In my piece I show different game boards as the landscape and basis, and a built block pentagon in the middle of it all, after all, behind innocence and games is societies pressures and the governments control. Lego people and small wooden animals are set in compromising sexual positions, showing we are subconsciously forced to do things before we're ready. I also chose to show the wooden animals using technology, little plastic phones from the game Scene It, to show the irony in forcing people to take life by steps, much like it's ironic and wrong for an animal to be chatting on a cell phone. I am naked in my piece with a dress placed on top of me, a dress I wore when I was six years old to my Aunt Kim's christmas party. I lay on the board games holding a picture of me when I was six, wearing the exact same dress sitting in front of the christmas tree with a picturesque fire blazing. My wrist is covered in red paint, referencing death, and symbolizing the death of childhood. I hold a knife.