In the time capsule thread, Johanna mentioned that she once played ameteur archaeologist, digging up a capsule she herself had buried.
It brought back a lot of memories. I used to play that, too! In front of my house, we had part of an old canal once used as transportation back in the 1830s. I used to go down there with a metal detector. When it sounded, I would carefully mark off the location with shoelaces and sticks (because I had seen real archaeologists do the same, but had no idea why) and then commence the dig.
I would take my findings to my grandmother-- they consisted mainly of rusty horseshoes and bridle bits. God bless her, she would marvel over them like I had found Tut’s Tomb. She even had a section of the porch wall where she hung all of my “treasures.” She bought me books on archaeology and of the history of the area-- which is probably what got me started with my love of history and why I work in a museum today.
My cousins and I also played “Escape from the Burning Building” in the barn. We would climb up to the highest rafters in the hay loft, and pretend we had to hurl ourselves to safety, daring each other to jump down into the hay before we got “burned up.”
We also played “action figures” with the barn cat’s kittens, dressing them up in doll clothes and using them to act out scenes we saw in cartoons and movies. I’m sure the kittens probably had nightmares about us for the rest of their lives.
We used to play “Noah’s Ark”, where my little brother was Noah since he was the only boy, and us girls would pair up and be whatever animals we wanted. My grandpa had a picnic table we would use as the Ark, and benches that we would use as the ramp that the animals used to get into the Ark. Then we would sit there and pretend to be in the storm.
We also played various forms of Tag, nearly on a daily basis because we had a big yard and all the kids would come over and have a big fun game. The variations I can think of were:
Freeze tag - When “It” tagged you, you’d freeze until someone else came over to tag you and unfreeze you
Cigarette Tag - If you could name a brand of cigarette before you were tagged you were free
Freeze tag, tv tag, cops and robbers, house, jump rope…
When we went over to my Dad’s friend’s house my brother and I would play with the two boys. We didn’t have a name for it, but me being the only girl I got to be the princess while the younger of the brother’s was my panther/large cat and his older brother/my younger were the bad guys. They’d kidnap the princess and my cat would save me.
I think we were mixing up stuff with She-ra and He-man mostly.
I would also play dinosaurs and had a ton of books on geology and plastic dinos, so I’d go out to bury them and dig them up, or I’d keep watch for any bones.
Requirements:
A large, cardboard box – it must be large enough to fit over your entire body, but still allow you to move about. Water heater boxes worked best.
Markers – to decorate the Mutilator box.
A large basement with lots of corridors and ways to backtrack on someone – like the one I had as a kid.
A bat – yeah, you heard me…a Louisville Fricking Slugger.
Other requirements:
No common sense whatsoever.
No parental supervision.
Rules:
One player is The Mutilator. They put the box over their body, and start sneaking through the darkened hallways. The other player is The Guy With Enough Brains Not To Be The Mutilator. He sneaks around, trying to avoid The Mutilator. This game of evasion lasts about 4 seconds before the two bump into each other. TGWEBNTBTM then pummels the The Mutilator with the bat. The two then trade roles. Game continutes until box is nothing more than a few scraps of cardboard, or until floor becomes too slick with blood to make for safe gameplay.
Go to the abandoned barn (with candles and matches!) and pretend our parents were killed and we were living on our own in a barn. Some kids were the bad guys who would chase us through the bard with rusty sickles and pitchforks. We’d jump through holes in the loft floor into hay (leaving burning candles unattended sometimes). Occasionally the police would come and shag us outta there (the nerve!). We were insane and reckless and those were the best years of our lives.
We played ‘Zombie’ at recess in elementary school…it was like freeze tag, only you became a Zombie and had to walk stiff-legged with outstretched arms to get your prey.
Always popular – playing Little House on the Prairie, which mostly involved going blind in as dramatic a way possible.
And two that don’t really seem to go together –
Playing bar. Finished basements with wet bars were the ultimate in home decor when I was growing up. We loved playing bar, mixing different kinds of soda together to make “cocktails,” taking orders, making menus, making up names for drinks.
Playing Mass. You can mush up Wonder Bread so it’s really flat like a communion wafer. Why was this fun, you might me asking. I have no idea.
We played something like that too, except we cleverly called it, “Ghosts in the Graveyard.” We also played kick the can and freeze tag.
I remember playing “Library” with my sisters. We made card holders to put in the backs of the books and little cards to put inside. Then we’d check out the books. How lame were we? Hey, at least we’re all avid readers. At my grandma’s house we played “store” a lot because she had a really cool toy cash register.
Later in life, we played a different kind of tripping, but in our innocent youth, we devised the schoolyard game of tripping. There were no teams. Everyone played for himself. You ran around. People stuck out their legs and tripped you. There was no “It”. There was no score. There was no ultimate aim. You just tripped each other. There was only one rule: if you were on the asphalt, you were not to be tripped. It was the only haven. Tripping someone, waiting for them to stand, then tripping them again, backwards as they rose, was frowned upon, but not illegal. You could trip whoever you liked, but every so often, everyone would gang up on one kid, usually the fat kid, tripping him mercilessly as he tried to get to the asphalt to save himself. bang, he hits the ground. He struggles to his feet. Bang. He hits the ground again. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Yes, I was the tripped kid a lot of the time. I cried at the time, but by Christ it made me a man today.
The game we loved to play in the neighborhood was called “Chase.” It was basically a hide-and-seek/tag hybrid. Differences–it was played outside, and if your hiding place was found you could still be “safe” if you ran like hell and avoided being tagged. (There was some sort of safe zone, I’m sure.)
Usually we did the “Three House Chase” variety. Basically that meant that the playing field was three neighboring homes. Amazingly, we didn’t have fences, and we didn’t have cranky old farts who’d turn the hose on us to get us off their lawn. Nope, we played in other people’s yards–showing full respect to their property. :::shakes fist in the air::: Back in MY day you see…
…Naw. Maybe it was a central Indiana thing. I visited my old neighborhood two years ago and it looked much the same. Meanwhile, SoCal is the land of cement brick walls and crabby territorial neighbors. Maybe it’s because in Indy the homes were on full acre lots, and here you think it’s spacious to have 1/4 of an acre.
Sailing Ship. The swingset in the back yard was a fully rigged ship and the lawn was the ocean. Mom’s garden in the corner of the yard was an island complete with lions for some reason. We’d row over to the island and explore, being mindful always of the lions, tomatoes, and radishes. Occasionally when a sailor would act up (say one of my younger brothers) we’d have to toss him overboard. He would wash up on the island then we’d pick him up later.
We played all the freeze tag stuff also. we had one at night called “flashlight tag” were “IT” had a flashlight to shine on you and if hit fully you were frozen until tagged by a non-it. Some times “King of the Mountain” on the picnic table. More than a few injuries there I tell ya.
During days, we had a pair of small clippers we liberated from a tool shed and we used them to carefully hollow-out a hedge row. If you were careful you ended up with a tunnel inside the hedge and no one could see us from the outside.
We also had an elaborate set of little army men that were small, half-inch types that I think they were intented for model train sets were people build large to-scale towns and stations. We waged large battles in mock cities of cardboard boxes (indoors) and in the wild jungles that were the backyard lawn.
You’d set up “bases” (any kind of flat, largish object would work) on opposite sides of the yard, maybe 50-100 feet apart. You also need a softish ball, like a tennis ball. And it only works with four or more people.
Two people start out as “throwers”, everyone else as “runners”. The throwers stand wherever they want, throwing the ball back and forth. The runners stand on the bases: as long as they’re touching one, they’re safe. When they’re off a base, one of the throwers can throw the ball at them, and if it hits, the runner and thrower swap places.
The goal of the runners is to find opportunities to go from one base to the other - one run equals one point. This is easy if the throwers suck, because they’ll drop the ball, or miss hitting you, but if they’re good, it’s tricky.
There is no rule that says you have to run straight from one base to the other - you can take whatever path you want, perhaps making use of cover and obstacles along the way.
My “Irish twin” brother (born less than a year apart) and I played “Pats and Jimmies”. These were adventures we would go on, and his name in the game was Jimmy and mine was Pat. We were both boys in the game, but I was (and still am) a girl- I chose Pat because it could be a boy’s or girl’s name. Okay, sounds pretty stupid now, but at the time it was fun.
We also played freeze tag, baseball, and board games.
Day of Doom, where we’d pretend to be Nordic gods and re enact the battle of Ragnarok.
Star Trek, where we’d pretend to be exploring a new planet and looking for intelligent life. (I don’t think we found any.)
Let’s Get Dizzy had several different versions, such as rolling down the hill with our eyes closed, turning somersaults with our eyes closed, or winding up the rope on the tire swing and then merrily swinging and unwinding with our eyes closed. The fun part was seeing if we could still walk with our eyes closed afterwards. We couldn’t.
Shopping Cart–steal a shopping cart from the local store. Get a brave and rather foolish friend to ride in said cart. Push shopping cart down the hill. Surprisingly, most of my childhood friends survived to adulthood.
Vulture–A vulture flies over. I, the resident naturalist, identify if and suggest to the other kids that if we lie on the ground like we are dead, maybe we can get it to come down.
Alas, it isn’t fooled.
Crawdad Races–we went to the creek and caught crawdads with our bare hands, then raced them on sandbars. When we got bored we just put them back in the creek.
Drug Tag–this was basically freeze tag, except that the frozen person would yell the name of a street drug until someone unfroze them. The person doing the unfreezing would yell “Chivalry lives!”