So, I had to go on a long (7+ hours) car trip with some co-workers. We did ok on the way there, but quickly degraded into childhood pastimes on the way home. We played some pencil and paper games, like Hangman and Dots. We played some word games like “I’m going on a picnic” and the Famous person name game. We made one of those fortune tellers that has the 4 points that you can touch together, then choose a color, lift a flap and read what was written inside. We talked about sleep over games, like Truth or Dare and Light as a Feather, but didn’t play any of them. We talked about patty cake type games, like Miss Mary Mack.
The one game that I was aware of that no one else was we had called BASH. (and I have been unable to find any reference to it on the Internet. My brother taught it to me – maybe he did make it up? I don’t know.) It was a two player war type game. B stood for battleship, A stood for airplane, S stood for submarine, and H stood for helicopter. On a piece of paper, you drew islands, then put the word BASH at both ends of the paper, once for each player. You could take one piece of equipment out at a time by making a quick pen stroke from that letter. When the stroke ended was where you would draw a dot. If you were a watercraft and your stroke crossed an island, you died and would have to take a new piece out the next time. If you were an aircraft and your endpoint was not on a island, it also killed that piece. The idea was to get your pen stroke through the most recent dot of the other person to blow them up. Whoever was the last one with live equipment won. Anyone else ever play this?
There was another thing girls would do in Junior High that only one other person had heard of (and I can’t find on the Internet, but it is a hard thing to search for). You wrote down two people’s names, one above the other, usually your own and the guy you had a crush on. Then you wrote TRUELOVE underneath those. Then you would count the letters as they appeared in your names. So if there was 1 T in your name, and one in his, you wrote 2 under the T. Then you would add the numbers that were next to each other and write the result below. This way, each line had one fewer digits than the line above. You stopped at two digits, and that was supposed to be a gauge of how much the two of you were meant for each other.
I am thinking that there were other things we did as children to pass the time, but I guess I am getting old and can’t remember.
Reminisce with me – how did you kill time growing up? Tell me about it!
A couple of friends and I would sometimes play the List game. You’d come up with a topic (such as “Greatest Movies of the 90’s”) and go in line with each person naming one. By the time everyone has five or so, then one person gets to remove one item off any list they like. They then compile the lists and come up with the five best and that’s the ultimate list.
It used to be a VH1 show that was mildly entertaining and in person it’s … mildly entertaining.
These are some I still play:
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The Radio Game (a car game): have someone in the front seat cycle through radio stations. They have to leave it set on each station for a few seconds. If you know the name of a song or the artist singing it, yell it out. You get half a point for the singer and another half-point for the song title.
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The Movie Game: one person names a movie or actor. The next person in line names an actor from the previously named movie, or a movie the previously named actor was in. Continue on this way until someone can’t name another actor or movie. See here.
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The List Game: different from interface’s game. Choose a category - birds, car models, cheeses - and each person in line must name an item from that category. Keep going until someone can’t think of another item, or until someone names an item that was previously used. That person is the big loser.
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The Number Game: each person playing counts the next number in line. So the first person would say “one,” the second “two,” and so on. You must omit the numbers seven and eleven, any multiples of seven or eleven, and any number containing seven or eleven in it (so 67 and 115 would be off-limits). See how high you can get.
…and then try playing the game.
Ba-dum-bum-csssh.
That’s the challenge round: get past four.
http://www.urban75.org/useless/bored.html has some good stuff.
The alphabet game has many variations. As you’re driving, you have to look for a sign that has an A on it, or in some versions, has a word that starts with A. Once you’ve got that, you try to find a B, or a word that starts with B, and so on to Z. Using license plates is cheating. Far too easy. Remembering a sign from a long time back is cheating. Even if you pass a hundred E’s, none of them count unless you’ve gotten all of A-D, THEN you see an E. Exceptions to this last rule (in some versions) include Q, X, and Z, because they are so rare, so you can get them at any point during the game.
Then there’s Ghost. You keep naming letters, until you create a word. Whoever finishes the word loses. But you always have to keep open the possibility of a word. So for example…
Player 1: L
2: O
1: C
2: U
[Player 1 thinks of “locus” but if he did that, he’d lose the game.]
1: T
[Player 2 thinks that no word starts with “locut” so challenges.]
2: challenge!
1: “locution”
[Player 1 wins the challenge, and wins the game.]
You can play with 3 or more as well, but I imagine it doesn’t work so well with more than about 4.