You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

When Whitney Bay was growing up in Illinois,

and her mom would tell her,

go outside and play.

She knew what that meant.

Play for us was going outside, climbing trees.

It was making mud pies.

It was, um, we used to like, reenact a lot of, like,

current events. Like the Olympics, the 1996 Olympics, I believe.

The 1996 Olympics were an iconic moment for young girls.

The dream team for us was made up of gymnasts.

Dominique Mociano, Carrie Strugg.

We little ones were obsessed.

We'd set up like this little bench and I'd run and I'd like jump over it like it's a vault. And it's literally just like a sitting bench.

So just like use our imagination. And it was fun. It really felt, I mean, of course it wasn't real, but it just

it felt like I was somebody. Like a lot of kids, Whitney was fluent in play. You probably

have an idea of what play is, but here's a definition I think really rings true.

I define play as any joyful act where you forget about time. It's where you're like fully immersed in the moment.

It's when you're your uist you.

That's Jeff Harry. He's a play coach. Companies hire him to get their employees to play more.

I like to say I make

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