Saturday, March 13, 2010

Childhood Games

I remember playing a lot of fun games as a kid. One that I liked was called "rope." We would pretend that the floor of the living room is hot lava and we had to stand on the couches and chairs so that we wouldn't burn up. One person (the rope) would walk slowly around the room and we would jump onto the person and they would carry us to the next couch. Why do most kid games involve hot lava? It seemed like the coolest fluid in the world. I mean, what's cooler than fire water?

Sometimes we would play American Gladiators and would turn our living room into an arena. My older brother, Chris, would use his Nerf Bow-and-Arrow and try to shoot us as we ran around, hiding behind the mini forts we set up, throwing tennis balls at Chris.

When it was nice outside, we would play Town. We would use leafs as money. There would be the police officer, the teacher, the baker, and the bus driver. Sometimes there would be a mayor, but we weren't really sure what the mayor did, so the mayor just basically sat around. The problem with Town was that we all just wanted to do our own jobs. We needed to have some "normal" people, meaning people without jobs, to actually go around and enjoy the Town.

The most dangerous game that I can remember playing involves some knives. Chris said it would be fun. We stood face to face, butter knives in hand, and took turn throwing the knives near the other person's feet. If we hit the other person, we lost--but the closest knife to the foot wins. The knife had to stick into the ground because, hey, it's really cool when the knife sticks in the ground. With each round we took one step back. I think we only made it to the third round before my mom saw what was happening.

I remember once we got into a loud-talking contest. My dad was taking a nap in the room next to where Chris and I were playing and we would take turns singing the Bill Nye theme song, but we had to get louder each time we sang it. The person to wake up dad lost.

I had a water drinking contest with Nathan, my older younger brother. We each took turns drinking a cup of water from the faucet. I think I won that contest with 5 cups (these were full glasses, not a measured cup). I felt so, so, so sick after that. But at least I won. Ha!

Can you remember any original games you played as a kid?

3 comments:

ali said...

remember that game we would play on the trampoline in germany where we would throw the balls and you had to jump around and not get hit? i don't remember what it was called but it was super fun!

Kathy Haynie said...

Not very original...lots of hide-and-go-seek, sardines...I remember those summer evenings playing with all the kids in the neighborhood.

For board games, I remember a goofy one called "Mousetrap." Is that one still around? I loved it. Monopoly was slow, Scrabble was good.

Like I say, not too original, but we had fun.

Katie Lewis said...

As a general rule I try to avoid doing anything that "Chris says would be fun."