Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Little Kid Games



Yesterday at school, my class talked about classical rhetoric. After an hour of Aristotle, logic, and syllogism, the conversation turned to something a bit less intellectual-- childhood games. My professor described the games he played as a child more than 40 years ago, and I noticed that the games I played about a decade and a half ago are not very different from the games he played.

I remember that during gradeschool recess when the days were sunny the boys would always play a game that would involve throwing rocks and running around; meanwhile us girls would either occupy a city block for our double dutch championship or merely a corner of the block for our "Ms Mary Mack Mack" and "Numbers" game. Of course yours truly won most of the handgames or she learned a new trick in double dutch to impress the older 6th grade boys.



40 years before my recess games, my professor played in the streets of Brooklyn. While the girls stayed inside the house and talked about each other, the boys threw rocks at one another, fought, played "Kick the Tin Can," chased cats and tied differents objects to its tails, and played good old fashioned Tag.

While some things have changed (many girls now play Freeze Tag and soccer with the boys), some have not. All five year olds think they're rich like Bill Gates with $5, and $1 always went a long way ($.50 for a can of Coke, $.25 for a bag of Doritos, and $.25 of loose candy).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

...and of course, no reminiscence of childhood games can go without some mention of MANHUNT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhunt_%28people_game%29)!

The imagery that you use really evokes strong remembrances of growing up. Those days were so simple!