Thanks for the SPUD rules, Dinsdale! I was terrible at that game–must’ve blocked it out!
Did anyone ever play Earthball in gym class? We had a gigantic ball (like 5 feet across) and rolled around on these little scooters. Similar to soccer.
Also, my favorite gym activity was the giant Parachute.
Used to??
Capture the flag
Freeze Tag
Spud
Hide’n’seek
…and on
We made up one called “Lava Monster”. The grass in the back of our suburban backyard was bisected by a dirt patch - from the space trolley (o joy of toys!). One person would be the lava monster and had to stay in the dirt patch. Everyone else would race back and forth, jumping over the dirt. If you got tagged by the LM, or your foot hit the dirt, you became a lava monster too.
Used to build a lot of forts, too. And climb trees.
Wow, is my heart singing!
My Southern California childhood included Greek Dodgeball (team style), tetherball, Raspberry (like Kick-the-Can but on bikes), making multi-storied tents in the backyard (Dad saying “Where the hell’s my picnic table?”), Red Light Green Light, Hopscotch. Playing Hide-and-seek with our dog Hilaire at the local elementary school.
The smell of Huntington Beach, Coppertone, taco strips, and Long Johns. Thanks for the memories!
This is just priceless. It captures all the elements of youth: athleticism, hazing rituals, a surplus of tennis balls and unsupervised children running amok.
Red Rover
Fox and Goose
Soccer Baseball (Usually played in school gym class)
Kick the Can (a different version from the one Kat mentioned one I learned just two years ago actually at summer camp for the first time)
Dodge Ball (Doctor Doctor, Regular Dodge Ball)
Hide and Seek
Red Light, Green Light
Siamese Twins
Streets and Avenues
Wink/Handshake Murder
What Time is it Mister Wolf
TV Tag
A lot of these I played in gym class at school (I wasn’t exactly popular with the neighborhood kids) but the highlights of my summers are going to camp and playing some of these games again. Usually in a huge field (or in the treed area around the camp near the river… last year I whacked my knee good crossing on a tree and I twisted my ankle the year before getting dragged in a tug of war game…) But we play all sorts of stuff like Kick the Can (Indoors where everyone gets in this one big circle and tries to get each other to kick the can… if you touch it or lose your hold on someone else your out. Its tons of fun and you usually get thrown about a bit), Capture the Flag, Assassin (Which involves running from one end of the camp with these little tabs or pieces of neon plastic tape stuff and avoiding the assassins out to kill you who take the tabs and getting to the table or area where you turn in your tab for a coffee stick and try to make it back to where you started)
In Guides one of my most enjoyed games was you took a glowstick (and you had to play just after twilight) you stuck it in the middle of a tree surrounded field and everyone except one or two people would hide in the woods. You would try to avoid getting caught while simotaneously trying to get to the glow stick. If you managed to get the glow stick you won. (or the people in the woods) If everyone got caught the seekers won.
All of those (ButtBall is an exception) and more! Isn’t it amazing how creative children are?
I once read a book on creativity and it said (paraphrasing) that if you take a group of 30 kindergarteners, draw a dot on the blackboard and ask them what it is, you will get 30 different answers. Taking a group of 30 3rd graders, you will hear ‘a dot’ or ‘a period.’ I digress.
My favorite games were always the ones we made up. Back before “Slip-n-Slide” came out, we would tape plastic sheeting together, add a hose and slide away.
I remember ice-skating in the streets after the ice-storm in 1977 (78?), that’s how frozen everything was. Those were the days.
So I am rereading this thread, thinking someone might have answered my question about a long-lost game of my feckless youth. I get to my post - okay, cool. Then I notice - MarkSerlin? WTF?
Then, I get to my post again, and I realize GODDAMMIT ANOTHER DEAD THREAD RESURRECTION!!
Oddly enough, my answers that are siix months apart are very similar, and nobody can answer what the fuck the game Scully is, but that was fucking WEIRD, man!!
Yer pal,
Satan
TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
One month, one week, two days, 4 hours, 23 minutes and 3 seconds.
1567 cigarettes not smoked, saving $195.91.
Life saved: 5 days, 10 hours, 35 minutes.
Remember it?! I ice skated to school ( no kidding.) in 9th or 10th grade after EVERY school in S.E. Michigan was closed ( Including you Kimball weiners) except my stick up the butt catholic school.
I completely forgot winter outdoor games. I remember after the “blizzard of '79” the snowplows dumped mountains of snow into our front yard. In a couple of them we tried to make snow caves, but the really big fun was carving steps up one side, then scooching down the other side repeatedly until you had a slippery buttgroove slide, lol.
Other snow fun I had was taking our big green Coleman cooler, filling it with snow, and turning it out into giant bricks. I’m sure my dad will never forget the day he came home from work to find a giant snow wall around the perimiter of the yard – with GRASS in the middle. (We’d used every last flake of snow to make the bricks! LOL!)
Once I got older I put a lot of effort into making snow “sculptures” using assorted odds and ends. I remember making a walrus with icicle tusks and a hippopotomus breaking the surface of the snow. Odd, a very odd child.
Man, I’d forgotten about this one. I don’t remember if it was '78 or not, but a hell of a lot of snow went into this one. The kids next door built a giant King Kong sprawled out on the ground like he’d just fallen off the Empire State Building. Our bus stop was an endless source of gymnastic fun until the thing melted. Now that was cool.
In winter, sledding on cookie sheets and snowball fights between snow forts.
In warmer weather, we played Spud, Capture the Flag, Flashlight Tag, kickball, and some kind of tag-related game where everyone had to get into our treehouse without being caught by It, who was manning the stairs. On occasion, Red Rover, Mother May I, Red Light Green Light, Hide & Seek. Running through the sprinklers.
Since I was the world’s most uncoordinated and accident-prone child I have lots of battle scars, but we used to have so much fun. We would leave the house after breakfast on a summer morning and not come home until after dark. We would run all over the neighborhood (within “boundaries”) and get lunch or snacks at whosever house we were nearest at the time.
My youngest brother, who is seven years younger than I am, and his friends never really played outside, except maybe shooting hoops. They had Nintendo. 
My brother and I used to run around with a brother and sister from down the street and we played a lot of roleplaying-type games where we would be characters from TV stories or comic books or D&D characters. Our favorites were GI Joe, Transformers, and ElfQuest, and then we invented our own mutant characters ala Marvel Comics. It was great, except no one ever wanted to be the bad guys. We used Construx for swords and the tree in the front yard was our secret headquarters. Until my uncle cut off all the branches we could reach, that is. By the time we were tall enough to reach the next branches we were too old to play anymore. ::sigh::
This sounds like “Suicide” and/or “Smear the Queer”… two games that I remember which may or may not have been the same.
Hmmm… the game other people are describing as “Smear the Queer” is not the “Smear the Queer” that we played.
Anyone play Pickle? I remember it involved a tennis ball and two bases, but I don’t remember the rules very well.
All of these games bring back memories. We also played one called Pomp. It sounds kind of similar to Dinsdale’s PomPom. One kid would be IT. All the others would line up on one end of the field. When IT yelled “Pomp!” everyone had to run to the other side. Anyone tagged by IT also became IT for the next run. We would have 20-30 kids playing. Towards the end, when only two or three were left, there was some serious strategizing by both sides. It was great.
We had tons of kids in the neighborhood, and during the summer, they would all congregate on our street, which had almost no cars, and play until the streetlights came on. I even remember one night when the older kids came out, too, and there was a primitive version of a street party. It’s a little fuzzy, but I remember Comin’ to America being blasted out on someone’s ghettoblaster (anyone else remember that term?). Those were the days.
This thread is definitely Threadspotting-worthy. It’s brought back memories I haven’t thought of in a decade. Thank you.
Yes I remember that term. I’m only 17 and I use that term a little. Either that or Boombox and I get weird looks for it.
What a great thread and what a lot of memories!
We dug a lot of holes, fox holes, tunnels and bomb shelters, usually in the yards of innocent and unsuspecting neighbors, out behind the lumber company and by the train bridge that we weren’t supposed to go near. One of the tunnels collapsed and the fire department was called out to rescue us, I’m pretty sure we soundly spanked for that one.
Our dad made us the guns, rifles, machine guns as needed, wooden and painted black, supposed to be outdoor play only. Previous owners of our old house had left a set of WWI soldiers, planes and map-like battle and troop areas, we probably wore those old papers out, perfect stuff for rainy days.
Many houses had barns nearby or attached and we could walk or crawl from barn to house and back depending on the set up. Houses were still close enough together so we could gather lots of kids for the outdoor games.
A whistle blew at 8:05 mornings and evenings and that was usually when we had to be home.
We also were tanned, lean to skinny and freckled!
We had two games that were kind of strange, but we invented them ourselves. We only played them when we were spending the night at someone’s house.
The first one was called “Butterworth”. Butterworth was an outdoor game. You line up two opponents at oppostite ends of the back yard. On a signal, you charge at one another as fast as you can go. When you get to the middle, you leap into the air and try to strike your opponent with your butt (using your hands is not allowed). The winner is the one who lands on his feet. If both opponents land on their feet, it’s a tie and they have to do it again.
The second one was called “Goinnng”. Goinnng was an indoor game, usually played once the parents had gone to bed. You put an unzipped sleeping bag (or large quilt) in the middle of the living room. Each participant drapes his sleeping bag over his shoulders and kneels in a corner, facing the middle. You bow to the center of the mat three times (saying “Goinnng!” each time – thus the name). At the end of the third going, you rise to your feet (once again, use of the hands will disqualify you) and try to shoulder your opponents off the mat. Anyone touching the mat with any part of their body above the knee is disqualified and must leave the playing area. The last one left wins.
Repeat until a parent enters the room, complains about the noise and threatens death or worse to the next one who utters so much as a peep.
–Baloo