While browsing the web I ran across a site that listed a bunch of games that kids played in my era that kids nowadays don’t seem to do anymore. I thought I’d be fun to introduce my son to some of these as he grows.
Remember Mother May I?, Red Light Green Light, Frozen Tag…etc?
It got me thinking about one game we played that I loved, but I can’t find it anywhere and I forgot the rules of the game. We called it Raining On the Roof and I recall throwing a ball (usually large like a basketball) on the garage roof and the person who was “it” had to catch it before it hit the ground. Meanwhile, everyone else had to run and then freeze in place at some point. That’s all I remember.
It might’ve been called something else depending on where you lived or the rules might vary, but this game was so fun for me as a kid.
I have a memory of an impromptu game of Raining on the Roof played with my aging parents, 30-something year old brother and young nieces and nephews and we all had the best time laughing and out of breath.
Anyone remember this game or want to reminisce about other ones?
Well, I was a kid in the 80’s and I’ve heard of all the games so I’ll feel free to toss in “500”. One person throws a ball to his group of friends, standing about, what, 30 feet away and calls out a number. Whoever catches the ball gets that many points. When someone gets 500 points (or over?) they get to throw the ball. IIRC, you used somewhat large numbers 50, 75, 100ish. The game switched throwers every few minutes.
I don’t remember “raining on the roof” but we spent plenty of time throwing balls on the roof and catching them. The trick was not to let it get stuck behind the basketball hoop. Then you had to stick a broom handle between the gutter and the backboard and try to get it out…of course that was all part of the fun. Even more fun was tossing the ball up on top of the (two story) house. Then no one knew where it was going to fall until it cleared the gutter on the way back down.
When I was a kid back in the 70’s we used to play a game called “Kick the Can”. One of our friends had a huge backyard so we would play it in his yard, after dark. The more people the better - we usually had about eight or ten kids playing.
One person was “it” and was stationed in the middle of the yard with a flashlight, guarding a large coffee can. The goal for the players who were not “it” was to make a complete circuit of the back yard, from a designated start/end point. If a player made it all the way around the yard without being seen then they were “safe”.
The goal of the player who was “it” was to try to capture the other players by calling them out if he saw them running from one hiding spot to another around the edge of the yard. Anyone who was captured had to come to the center and sit near the can. If any active player was able to run to the center and kick the can without being seen by the player who was “it”, then all of the captured players were allowed to run free while “it” ran after the can and brought it back to the center of the yard.
The game was over when all players were either captured or safe. Then it would be someone else’s turn to be “it”.
Remember Kick The Can. We had a block party once a year and had a massive KtK game with all the kids in the area.
The other I remember was “sardines”. One person hides. If you found the hider you had to hide with them. It becomes easier and easier to find the hiders.
Favorite recess game - “ethnic”* kickball. One person would be the pitcher and everyone else (~20 people) would run the bases.
Brian
*Chinese in our case
Version for the baseball-crazy neighborhood I spent some time in:
Bat and ball, fly ball=100 pts, 1 bounce=75, 2 bounces=50 and so on. Also, Three Flies Up with a grounder counting as a fraction of a fly(usually four).
When I was a kid we used to play a game called “Smear the Queer.” Yes, it was probably a slur, but that’s what we called it. Anywhere from three to a dozen could play. One kid threw a ball more or less straight in the air, and the other kids tried to catch it. The one who caught it was the “Queer” or runner, and the others tried to tackle him as in football. The game was generally confined to a limited are, most often, somebody’s front yard. When the runner was tackled, he threw the ball into the air and somebody else caught it. Despite the horrible name, it was great fun.
Hide and Seek was king of the games when I was roaming around.
I’m sure you all know about “Lawn Darts” or “Jarts”. That’s where you try to kill each other with miniature javelins. All fun and games till the lawyers found out about it.
As kids, we invented the “Death-Mo War”. Teams of kids would construct make-shift forts in the forest about 10-15 yards apart. Then, you went to war. Just started hurling stuff at the other team. Sticks, pine-cones, rocks. Anything you could pick up, you could throw, with the exception of glass bottles. We weren’t stupid! 
I don’t recall anyone ever being seriously hurt.
Spell “cup.”
Where I grew up (Northeast Philly in the 70s), this was known as “Kill The Man With The Ball.” We played it with a football.
“Murderball” and “Suicide” were great fun, essentially just variations on hitting your friends with a hurled tennis ball.
I remember that, and in my town it had the same name.
We played this too in the early 70s, even at school. Great fun.
We used to play Touch football (Telephone poles were the end zones), kick ball, Hide and Seek and a game we sometimes called Pickle and sometimes called Running Bases where we had two cracks in the street that served as bases and two guys throw a ball to each other while people would run back ad forth from base to base. The last person not tagged out on a base won.
It was “Kill the Carrier,” in late 70s suburban NYC.
My town was Biloxi, Mississippi when I was playing the game.
Moved Cafe Society --> the Game Room.
Another great hide and seek variant – Beckon. Once you got found, you had to follow the “seeker” around as he or she kept finding the other people – but you could sneak away without that person seeing you, you could hide again. The seeker had to have everyone in the line behind him or her to win. Depending on how many people were playing, that could be quite a challenge.
This was “Wallball” in the early 90s. You’d find a good hard surface (the brick wall of the school worked best) and a kid would throw the ball at the wall. If you caught it, then you threw it on the wall. But if someone tried to catch it and dropped it, that person had to run against the wall and wait for someone to pelt them with the tennis ball as hard as they could.
“Kill the Carrier” in the late 80s in Western New York too. This would probably make a fascinating language map.
I sort of remember the game the OP described. At least I remember we had some game that involved throwing the ball up on the roof and having it roll down. Don’t remember the rules though.
I remember a game we played specifically at my grandparents’ house. They had a power line on their property that had four wires running on it. So we had a game where you threw a ball up into the wires and had to throw it through specific combinations of wires - like you had to throw it above the two wires on the right but not above the two wires on the left.