I once read that if you want to know the person you really are, you should examine yourself as a pre-teenager. That is the last time in our lives that social and academic pressures, desire to excel, and the need to find our place in the world don’t rule our activities.
The world was still new and exciting and we were curious to discover it in our own way.
I realized recently, when I designated every Thursday as my day to play, that I had lost the ability to do that. When I was young, toys were precious and rare. Now I can buy any toy I want, but no longer know how to just let go and have fun.
When I was growing up with my five younger sisters in Rogers we knew how to have fun. My dad had a good job, and we were by no means poor, but we didn’t have much money to spend on toys and games. So we made them up.
Most of the outdoor games were some version of tag. We played hide-and-seek, capture the flag, and kick-the-can. Our favorite was Around the House, where whoever was IT would tag to freeze the others, who could in turn be freed by being tagged by the non-“IT’s.” Only IT could run and the others had to walk around the perimeter of the house. Sounds simple, but we played for hours. We also played tag with polyethylene bowling pins, two to a person, and when hit you had to give up the pins to the person who got you. Heavy on strategy! Do you go after the weaker players to accumulate pins, or go after the better players to eliminate the competition while the others ganged up on you?
Other games were “May I?” and move-up, where IT sat at one end of the yard watching the non-IT’s through an empty cardboard tube while they tried to sneak up to the finish line. If you were caught moving you had to go back to the start. A little more physical was statues, where IT would swing the others around, fling them free and say “freeze,” and they had to hold their last position.
One porch game was golf, where a complete 18-hole course would be laid out with rolled clay on the concrete floor with tinker toy clubs and marble golf balls. More sedate was the construction of a covered maze made up of leftover tiny bathroom tiles. Each contestant caught their own roly-poly, inserted it into the maze, and timed it to the exit, fastest time wins.
Summer was filled with card and board games. We discovered Clue and couldn’t afford to buy it, so we made the entire set out of cardboard, paper, and leftover pieces of other games. It didn’t occur to us not to play Clue just because we didn’t own the game.
Indoor versions of tag included Sardines, where IT hid somewhere in the house. The non-IT’s would search him out, and when discovered instead of becoming IT right away, would quietly slip into the hiding place, followed by the others until only one person was left searching the house for the hiding place containing everyone else. Another version was to hide an alarm clock set for five minutes. All the non-IT’s would place themselves strategically around the house to be the first to find the clock when it went off and be the next to hide it.
The one game we could only play when the parents were away was rosary tag. We pulled out the two double beds in my little sisters’ bedroom to make a figure-eight racecourse, and then made the room completely dark. IT wore a glow-in-the-dark rosary around their neck as we all crawled around the beds and through the closets to avoid being tagged. A little sacrilegious I guess, but great fun.
Later in my life I heard someone at the Air Force Academy say, “Give a cadet a rock and a piece of string and he’ll make a game out of it.” I realized then that I had been well prepared.
The world was still new and exciting and we were curious to discover it in our own way.
I realized recently, when I designated every Thursday as my day to play, that I had lost the ability to do that. When I was young, toys were precious and rare. Now I can buy any toy I want, but no longer know how to just let go and have fun.
When I was growing up with my five younger sisters in Rogers we knew how to have fun. My dad had a good job, and we were by no means poor, but we didn’t have much money to spend on toys and games. So we made them up.
Most of the outdoor games were some version of tag. We played hide-and-seek, capture the flag, and kick-the-can. Our favorite was Around the House, where whoever was IT would tag to freeze the others, who could in turn be freed by being tagged by the non-“IT’s.” Only IT could run and the others had to walk around the perimeter of the house. Sounds simple, but we played for hours. We also played tag with polyethylene bowling pins, two to a person, and when hit you had to give up the pins to the person who got you. Heavy on strategy! Do you go after the weaker players to accumulate pins, or go after the better players to eliminate the competition while the others ganged up on you?
Other games were “May I?” and move-up, where IT sat at one end of the yard watching the non-IT’s through an empty cardboard tube while they tried to sneak up to the finish line. If you were caught moving you had to go back to the start. A little more physical was statues, where IT would swing the others around, fling them free and say “freeze,” and they had to hold their last position.
One porch game was golf, where a complete 18-hole course would be laid out with rolled clay on the concrete floor with tinker toy clubs and marble golf balls. More sedate was the construction of a covered maze made up of leftover tiny bathroom tiles. Each contestant caught their own roly-poly, inserted it into the maze, and timed it to the exit, fastest time wins.
Summer was filled with card and board games. We discovered Clue and couldn’t afford to buy it, so we made the entire set out of cardboard, paper, and leftover pieces of other games. It didn’t occur to us not to play Clue just because we didn’t own the game.
Indoor versions of tag included Sardines, where IT hid somewhere in the house. The non-IT’s would search him out, and when discovered instead of becoming IT right away, would quietly slip into the hiding place, followed by the others until only one person was left searching the house for the hiding place containing everyone else. Another version was to hide an alarm clock set for five minutes. All the non-IT’s would place themselves strategically around the house to be the first to find the clock when it went off and be the next to hide it.
The one game we could only play when the parents were away was rosary tag. We pulled out the two double beds in my little sisters’ bedroom to make a figure-eight racecourse, and then made the room completely dark. IT wore a glow-in-the-dark rosary around their neck as we all crawled around the beds and through the closets to avoid being tagged. A little sacrilegious I guess, but great fun.
Later in my life I heard someone at the Air Force Academy say, “Give a cadet a rock and a piece of string and he’ll make a game out of it.” I realized then that I had been well prepared.
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