by Vernice Cates

Created on: March 09, 2007   Last Updated: May 19, 2007

Ever wonder why and when games from today differ so much from games when you were young? I played games in the 60's and they differed so much from games played today. We played a lot of different games cowboys and Indians being one favorite of mine. It was a simple game rather like hide and seek and tag mixed together. It was fun no matter if you were the cowboy or the Indian. I also had a favorite called freeze tag where once frozen you had to wait for a team member to unfreeze you and once frozen 3 times you were automatically it. We could take different themes and add it to the same game when we were bored as well. For example it could be soda tag, restaurant tag. candy bar tag etc.

Also a game we played often during school was red rover red rover when opposing teams requested that someone be sent right over and if they were able to break the chain of arms then they got to choose who they were taking back to their team with them. If they failed to break the chain of arms they were then required to stay as part of that teams members.

Then there was hopscotch where the hopscotch was drawn on the sidewalk and multiple members played, and the more there were the more fun was had. Hoola hoop was another great game that we all played and took turns at and the more turns we got the better we became because everyone knows practice makes perfect!

I had a bell that hooked on my ankle by a hoop and when I swung my foot out the bell came around for me to jump with the other foot, and the cool thing about that was it counted the number of times you jumped so you could jump to your hearts content and never had to worry about counting! I cannot tell you how many days I spent the entire day in different sessions jumping that bell. And of course everything has a downside, when that bell came around and caught you on the other ankle boy that hurt really bad and out of an hour of jumping you could look forward to that happening a few times anyway.

Then there was jumping rope and all the little songs we sang about it. We could jump the entire recess. We jumped in pairs, we jumped hots, we double dutched and we always had a blast, and no need for batteries!

Ahh thinking about all these games brings back such fond memories! If I close my eyes I can hear the laughter from my childhood and the chants from the different games as well, and if I listen very closely I can hear the bell that draws us back inside from our playtime, or hear my mommas voice calling me inside to dinner....boy those truly wre the days!

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