When I was a kid living in rural Wisconsin, I came up with an imaginary country in our backyard called “Monotaga”. I think part of this came from my love of geography, which I got from my dad. It’s easy to understand then that I made a map of Monotaga and the other countries around it. (Monotaga is actually an island nation, but on the continent to the south of it, there are many other countries.) I came up with some history about the countries and wars they had with each other, in addition to facts about climate, terrain, etc. (I even remember making one of my junior high classmates, Kristie K., suffer through a survey of the history of Monotaga on the bus after school one day!)

Being interested in music, too, I came up with national anthems for a lot of these countries. (The “national anthems” generally were nothing more than like two lines of lyrics with really simple music.) I still have a tape with these songs on it. (I liked recording myself and family members on audiotape when I was younger. I think I got this from my family, too, since at family gatherings, someone would often turn on a cassette recorder while aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins would sing Polish folk songs and talk about the stories from the past.) As far as I can remember, the lyrics to Monotaga’s national anthem were “Monotaga/You’re the star in the sky/Monotaga/Rich in land and freedom/Monotaga, you’re my home” or something like that. (Apparently, Monotagans pride themselves on the richness of their land and that of their freedom–in that order.)

All my Monotaga stuff resided in a purple pocket folder sitting in a box under my bed. I’m sure I’ve still got it all somewhere, although I can’t say that I’ve looked at it in the past ten years.

I thought about all this recently when I stumbled across the entry on micronations on wikipedia and then an article at Wired.com.