Heading down memory lane to all of those summers spent outdoors with nothing to do but play with neighborhood friends. Some other popular games we played:
Red Rover (not my favorite due to the pain involved)
Hopscotch
Mother May I? . . . "take 3 baby steps and 1 umbrella step"
Freeze Tag
TV Tag (shouting the name of a TV show to get back into the game)
Ghost in the Graveyard (a different take on Hide and Seek)
Statue (I can't find this one on the internet, so we possibly made it up) Someone spins each player by one arm and whatever position the person lands, she has to come up with a statue name. After everyone is a statue, spinner pretends to press a button on each player, who acts out whatever statue they've invented. Spinner determines who had the best idea. Sounds weird, but it was one of my faves.
We would occasionally find enough kids to play kickball or some form of baseball. We also had a large wooded area at the end of our street where we rode bikes on dirt hills and built makeshift forts. I did a google screenshot of what it looks like today:
Indoors, we would play House, School, Grocery Store, or Hotel, which was mostly someone pretending to check in to a room, sleep, and then fill out the customer service card about how their stay went. Yes, my idea of fun was a bit unusual. I was also obsessed with designing indoor Haunted Houses, which involved a lot of tables, sheets, and attempts at making scary stuff out of household items.
I did have one girl in the neighborhood tell me she wasn't going to play with me anymore if I brought up the Haunted House thing again. Later on, she had a baby at 19 and then became a lesbian.
We all had our issues!
OMG...I LOVED Statue! And no, I don't think it sounds weird at all because it was truly one of my favorites! Loved Freeze Tag as well!
ReplyDelete"Things change in a half century! That looks nothing like what I remember."
Yes, isn't it funny how when we look at things today, they look nothing like what we remembered? To me, when I see images of my childhood home now, it seems so much smaller than how I remembered it. When I was a kid, everything seemed so BIG.
"Indoors, we would play House, School, Grocery Store, or Hotel, which was mostly someone pretending to check in to a room, sleep, and then fill out the customer service card about how their stay went."
HA! Me as well! I loved playing grocery store because my parents actually had an old cash register in our playroom that we would used to ring people out whenever we played grocery store!
" Later on, she had a baby at 19 and then became a lesbian. "
OMG...that made me LAUGH OUT LOUD!
Fun post, my friend. Really enjoyed it! X
Another Statue player? That's fabulous! I wasn't able to find anything about it online!?! Isn't it funny how these games were just spread word of mouth? Yes, things seem so much smaller than what we remember, especially sizes. I loved playing anything that had to do with running a business; I guess that's why I became a business major. And I'm glad you appreciate my humor regarding that mean girl!
DeleteFirst time I've ever heard of statue. Red Rover sure was a winner here. They banned playing it here now though. Poor kiddos might get hurt. True, but still it was fun. That and dodgeball. Baseball was fun when you can get enough people together.
ReplyDeleteYou must have been great halloween time with your haunted houses.
Life choices come to us all, even at 19 haha
Dodgeball was awful! I remember getting slammed in the face once and crying in the restroom at school. I wanted to charge admission to my haunted houses but got very few takers.
DeleteI remember playing Statue :) I didn't know what Grandmother's Footsteps was, but did play lots of red light/green light. We also played Simon Says. How cute with your imagination with designing Haunted Houses. So much fun and simple games growing up and so different from what kids do these days to spend their free time!
ReplyDeletebetty
Another Statue player!?! Maybe it was a PA/Ohio thing! Ron is from PA, too. We did use our imagination a lot as kids. My kids invented some interesting games outdoors as well. I miss those days.
DeleteI've heard of most of these, but don't think we played any, except, Ghost in the graveyard, we played flashlight tag after dark, I suspect that was a similar game.
ReplyDeleteI think it is similar. It took so long for it to get dark in the summer that I don't remember being allowed to stay up that long for flashlight tag.
DeleteNo more playing with you in a Haunted House - cute.
ReplyDeleteWhat about musical chairs?
Some kids were just party poopers! Lol! I only played musical chairs at school.
DeleteWe played something like that Statue game; maybe it's just an Upper Midwest thing. . .
ReplyDeleteWe had a group of anywhere from 10-20 boys who would get together for impromptu baseball games. There were a half-dozen or so vacant lots in town, and we'd just call each other up, agree on a field, hop on our bikes and play. If we didn't have enough guys, there were various ways of playing anyway - any ball hit to the opposite field was foul, or we'd use 'ghost runners', or somesuch. Or we'd play 'Work-Up', where you had guys play the field, and maybe three batters. The batters would hit until they made an out, then they'd go out to right field and work their way up (hence the name, 'Work-Up') as the new batters made their own outs, and you'd progress through all the positions until you got to hit again. . .
When I was trying to write how I remembered Statue, I thought it sounded far out there, so I'm glad others remember it. We had nowhere near that many kids to play with. Our neighborhood was just a giant letter H (two parallel streets with a connector). I do remember using ghost runners and such to play kickball and the like.
DeleteOur crew of ballplayers came from all over our smallish (pop 15,000) town. Most of us were already on Little League teams, and the sandlot games were just so we could play more than just our Little League games. In those days, we could ride our bikes anywhere in town, anytime. . .
DeleteThat must have been fun!
DeleteLove this post, Bijoux.
ReplyDeleteI remember playing Red Rover in school. I avoided Buck-Buck, or "Johnny on a Pony" because it involved having other kids jump on your back. We played some version of Statue as we well, along with stick ball, Slap (sort of like baseball without a bat), and a game where you bounced a Spaldeen (Splading) off a stoop and every bounce racked up another base. ("Single, double, triple...") Some people called it "Stoop Baseball" but we called it "Catch A Fly's Up".
I don't recognize the indoor games you mentioned, but "Haunted Houses" sounds kind of cool.
But I don't think you're to blame for that girl having a baby and becoming a lesbian. :)
Wow! Those are a lot of games I've never heard of, Rob! Brooklyn must have had its own kind of fun! And yes, anyone with imagination would think creating haunted houses was cool!!!
Delete"Later on, she had a baby at 19 and then became a lesbian." - HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I couldn't focus on a game because of this comment! Hahahaha. - Okay. Games. We usually had enough kids in the neighborhood for softball and kickball so I'll pick those two. :)
ReplyDeleteBahahaha.....omg, I knew you would think it was hilarious! Honestly, if you and I ever got together, we could have a stand up duo routine!!! XO
DeleteWhere I grew up there was a park right across the street from my house. My mom would let us go over and play with the kids over there all the time. There was also a toy rental shop near the back of the park. It was like a library where we would pick out three toys at a time to check out for 2 weeks and would have to bring them back in order to check out 3 more. My little brother was much more outgoing than I was so I just hung out with him and he would find kids for us to play with, while I would be around to take care of anyone who bullied him since I was almost 3 years older than him and had a bad temper as a kid. lol Shy with a bad temper, now there's a winning combination.
ReplyDeleteA toy lending library sounds really cool!!! That was nice of you to look out for your brother, bad temper and all.
DeleteThe only ones I know are hopscotch (every child played that all the time) and freeze tag (played now and again). And of course hide and seek which kids also played all the time. But I never see any kids playing outdoor games nowadays, they're always kept inside "out of harm's way" Which is sad, those games were such fun.
ReplyDeleteI do see kids in our neighborhood outdoors, usually riding bikes. It's hard to see into backyards, so there may be children playing in groups where I can't see them.
DeleteWow, you've ignited a lot of summer memories. I definitely remember Statues and Freeze Tag . Hopscotch and roller skating were popular (at this point in my life, I can't imagine myself on roller skates....). We rode bikes and did a lot of swimming. In quiet hours we played checkers, Chinese checkers, and board games.
ReplyDeleteWe also did a lot of walking - to stores, to the library, and to the movies. Things seemed much more safe back then - - but I don't know if they really were...
DeleteAnother Statue player! I loved Chinese Checkers. My brother and I had our own version that involved flicking the marbles on each turn to attempt to knock off your opponents' marbles. Last marble standing was the winner!
DeleteWe didn't have anywhere to walk to and no sidewalks where I lived. We were on the border of city limits.
Loved this post! Mother May I, tag, freeze tag, dodge ball, hopscotch.... I played them all. I'm really surprised that you did the haunted house thing too! I thought I was alone in doing that. The Slip and Slide was also quite fun back in the day.
ReplyDeleteOH how nice to meet another haunted house creator! It's funny because I won't watch horror films now, but I loved scary stuff as a kid.
DeleteI hated red rover, too, and since I was small people would always aim for my arm. I did love hopscotch and mother may I and statue (you definitely didn't make that one up!). And freeze tag. I lived lots of different places growing up and they all had great places to roam - for instance, our neighborhood in Mississippi had a beach and we had a 90 acre farm in Georgia. I liked just mucking around in nature even more than the games.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was writing about Statue, I thought it sounded very strange, and I couldn't find anything about it online. I really enjoyed playing outdoors as a kid. Actually, I still do.
DeleteMy daughter is six and spends more time indoors than outdoors. She doesn't have any electronics and really is enjoying her childhood. We also moved to a street where we are all pretty much the same. It's great! It's also great knowing that this isn't extinct. Our favorites were kickball, around the world, and creating a chalk drawn town. We grew in a culdesac so it was a little easier to do these team events. LOL
ReplyDeleteMy kids spent a lot of time outdoors, too. My two youngest used to play 'Survivor' in the backyard (we lived in the woods). I had to put a stop when one of them mentioned peeing in a sand bucket....LOL!
DeleteThings do change. My favorite sledding hill (affectionately named Death hill) was cut out to make space for Red Lobster and its parking lot. The farm we were on when I was a bitty boy now has only a silo left, the rest is open fields and untamed woods. Last I heard, the house I grew up in was a college rental.
ReplyDeleteWe played hide-and-seek, football, and kill-the-guy-with-the-ball until the open spaces were built up and Man Hunt and Capture the flag took over. Those were the days ......
The Dead Lobster, the killer of many dreams!
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