I pretended a lot.
I feel lucky to have had an actual childhood--the non-TV, offline, almost feral type--even though I was annoyingly imaginative. Imagined characters, people, animals, places, personalities. I had imaginary friends, talked to stuffed animals (holding full-on conversations, and treating them like people.) Everything ended up with a personality: I talked to wildlife, talked to pets, waved at the engineer on the railway and his locomotive, wrote letters to a tallcase clock in a clockmaker's shop, drew pictures on paper or on chalkboards or out in the dust of the road with a stick.
Even as a teenager I ended up feeling sorry for inanimate objects -- hence the collection of suspiciously bedraggled antiques and other old junk.
I write, imagining myself to be the different characters while I go--and feel like I and my typewriter are coauthoring the thing.
It's a colorful but not necessarily accurate interaction with the world.