I Wonder As I Wander: May 2023 Games Day

 

 I was just replying to a suggestion made by Mable on a post comment about Josh helping to 'teach' the other three children.  It reminded me that Taylor had been 'teaching' Caleb the other day while she was here and I mused as I listened to the two of them that I used to love to play school.

My brothers and I often lived in the country, isolated from classmates and cousins.  My parents were the sort who were only occasionally social.  Our neighbors were never that nearby.  We didn't run back to town to pick things up once a day was done.  It was just the way of things.

But my point is that we played school a good bit especially on long holidays from school.  I loved being the teacher.  Occasionally my middle brother would be the teacher.  Poor younger brother only ever got taught.  Not that he seemed to mind.

That was just one place where we played 'school'.  Of course, when all seven of us cousins were lucky enough to be at Granny's at some point in the visit, we always settled to playing school.  Then our oldest cousin was the teacher and the rest of us were students.

Another game we often played was also called school, but it was really a guessing game.  We played it primarily at church but with our cousins as well.  It was a game taught us by the preacher's daughter.  She was probably in early high school at that time.

The game began with a teacher and all the rest of us were students.   The teacher stood before us.  All the students sat on the very topmost step (we were blessed to have a high set of steps on the church).  The teacher had a small round pebble in her hand.  She'd put her hands behind her back and switch the pebble from one to the other.  Then she'd stand before a student with both hands closed into fists and her hands before her.  The test was to guess which hand contained the pebble.  If you guessed correctly, you moved down a step to the next grade.  Once you reached the bottom step and graduated from there, then you became the teacher and everyone else had to start all over again on the first step, lol.  

In my childhood, we had a good 10 children playing the game at once so it could take quite a few tries to graduate.  

There were other old-fashioned games played: Sling the Biscuit, which involved taking another by their arm and spinning round and round with them then suddenly letting go. The person being slung would falter wildly being both dizzy and the victim of velocity.  The person who was doing the slinging would watch for a few seconds and then yell, "Freeze!"   The deal was to freeze into a pose.  Then an impartial judge (HA!) would tell which person's pose won the game.  That person got the be the one who slung the next lot of people about.  We later changed the name to Statues.

There was the game of Red Rover.  Do any of you remember that.  Two opposing teams formed long lines and would call for a person from the opposing team.  They would chant, "Red Rover, Red Rover send Terri right over."  And that team member would run hard and fast as they could and try to break through the chain of linked arms.  If you broke the line, you got to take one of the opposing team back to your side with you.  Fail, and they captured you and you became part of their team.  

Of course, there was Dodge Ball.  And Jump Rope.  We'd play at House amongst the roots of trees or by scraping fallen leaves into small rooms for our houses.  Cowboys and Indians was always a favorite.  This of course, being the era of Westerns such as The Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Bonanza and all those John Wayne movie reruns.

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The children were playing hide and seek.  Caleb can count to three and then he yells "Here I come!"  Taylor's gotten quite good at hiding and staying hidden instead of peeking out to see where he is.  Sometimes, I think Caleb is just being a sport and purposely not seeing her in her hiding spot just to prolong the game.  

I'm glad that games like Hide and Seek are still popular with the children.  I sometimes wonder if they're missing out on the old-fashioned good fun of games, but their playing Hide and Seek makes me think they are not after all.

And they still want to climb trees, too.  Surely there is hope in a world where children play Hide and Seek and climb trees.

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Though Grandmother and Granddaddy had a television, the family played lots of games.  They'd gather after supper in the evening around the dining room table and out would come Monopoly.  I also remember card games such as Old Maid, Go Fish, and Authors.  If you've never heard of that game before, click on the link and check it out.  I was interested to see that they also had sets of composers, inventors, and a few more famous folks.

I always wanted to join in but as I was about Caleb's age or just barely over that a the time, I was not much of a player.  Still, I enjoyed the excitement the grown-ups got into over their games.  

Granny never really approved of card games of any sort, which I think is rather funny.  However, she learned in her fifties or early sixties, to play Gin Rummy and Go Fish and she kept decks of cards and taught us grandchildren to play.  She also brought out Checkers, Jacks, Chinese Checkers and encouraged us to do Jigsaw Puzzles.  I don't think I ever quite caught the jist of the Chinese Checkers game at all.

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Chinese Checkers reminds me that the other day I found a huge old cat eye marble at the dump.  I saw it shining up out of the gravel and I took a second to dug it out and dropped it in my purse.  I remembered then that at one point we were all Marbles crazy.  We collected marbles, which we bought by the bag full in Nylon net bags.  We drew an eye shape in the dirt on the ground and we 'shot' marbles.  We swapped and traded marbles.  Some kids acquired Marbles that were their grandfather's and boy were those some lovely old things.  I think we kept up the whole Marble craze right up to Junior High and then it became passe.

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Mama and Daddy finally caught on that we kids would generally play with board games and keep out of their hair, so they purchased Monopoly, Parcheesi, and Sorry.  I'm sure there were others as well...Oh yes, Scrabble and I was a whiz at that one but always ended up bankrupt in Monopoly.

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Nothing, however, was more fun than a plain old fashioned 2x4 board and rope swing tossed over a branch of the old oak trees for play.  Trouble was, there was only one swing and we had to take turns.  It was an awfully long wait when all seven of us wanted to play.  Granny was rather relieved when that old rope finally rotted and the swing broke.

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We loved as kids to go to the fields.  There was a copse of trees near the creek banks that we especially loved playing in.  There were mossy patches to sit on and on a hot summer's day there was something extremely refreshing about being in that spot under the green leaves above and sitting on the cool moss.  We played a variety of games there in that spot.  We played at House, and we played school.  We played cowboys and Indians and used the cows grazing on the fields for our Indians.  We had many and may a shootout with those cows and our lichened covered stick guns.

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We could play down in that copse for hours and seldom went to dabble in the creek until the summer was well and truly hot. Or in late winter when the peepers started croaking.  Yes, in the cold of winter we wanted to get into the creek and gather our little, tiny tadpoles and baby frogs in various development stages.  We brought milk cartons home from school to use to gather those frogs.  I'm sure that all the adults were fully relieved once we'd had our fill of that particular game.

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We had a variety of outdoor games to play.  At home, the boys had baseball bats and balls and gloves, footballs and a basketball and hoop.  We played our little games of touch football and baseball though it was hard to play with three and seven.  We never had quite enough to play a really good game of either of the first two games.  

As the weather cooled, Daddy would often call us outdoors to play Horse with the Basketball and we'd all talk and shoot baskets and generally enjoy ourselves.

We also had badminton, but the breeze caught the birdie more often than not.  I was quite fond of Croquet, but we weren't able to take that game with us to Granny's so again, it was only the three of us.  Still we occupied our time playing the game on the front lawn.

And at some point, at least for a little while we had a tether ball.  

In the depths of my shed right now there is a badminton set and a croquet set.  I think most of the grandchildren are about old enough to enjoy those games now.  I'll have to remember to pull them out for them to play...

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