The other night at the local the conversation wandered, as it often will, onto the subject of games we played as a children. Specifically we discussed MASH, along with that game that none of us could remember the name of but involved origami and predicting the future.
I’ve written previously of the pasttime known as Kill The Man With The Ball, but I can recall many more games than that, each with its own rules and attendant rituals. I either played myself, or can remember other kids playing:
British Bulldog
Cat’s Cradle
Crack the Whip (played on frozen ponds)
Dodge Ball (in my neighborhood we favored a variant known as ‘Hospital Dodge’)
Double Dutch
Duck Duck Goose
Four Square
Mary Mack
Mercy
Mother May I?
Paper Football
Red Light, Green Light
Red Rover
That’s a whole subculture, as complex in its way as Cockney Rhyming slang, that I suspect has largely vanished from the fields, playgrounds and vacant lots of America. I’d be delighted to be shown otherwise. What games do you recall from your childhood? I’m particularly curious if anyone born past, say, 1980, grew up indulging in these same sort of activities.
Great post. I grew up next to a schoolyard, where we played baseball off the wall (above the first level of windows, a double, on the roof, a home run, etc.) Once a year, the school janitor would ascend to the roof to throw down all the India rubber balls that had been caught in the gutter, and we would wait below to catch them.
At recess, kick ball was a staple. We also played Quaker School (or Chinese School), and various chase games where the safe off-limits area, if I recall correctly, was called Ghouls (don’t know why).
Chinese jump rope
http://www.gameskidsplay.net/games/other_games/chinese_jump_rope.htm
Rattlesnake
I couldn’t find any mention online, but everyone forms a line and holds hand, then the last person in line goes under the joined arms of the first two people and on and on until a jumbled chain is formed…all the while annoyingly singing “r-a-t, t-l-e, s-n-a-k-e spells rattlesnake”
And the various types of tag – freeze tag, ball tag, bike tag, stuck in the mud.
My brother and I made up a game called Diplomacy that included a hand drawn map of Europe, except it wasn’t very diplomatic and you could only play on the mudflats at low tide.
I recall many of those, as well as rousing playground games of kickball and touch football. Kids don’t seem to play like that at school anymore…or that is at least the impression I get. We had such fun doing stuff like that when I was a kid.
I’ve always wondered how you spell ‘Ghouls’ and if this a New Englandism, like jimmies.
We played Kick the Can quite often.