Something fun for a change.
I happened to see a commercial for the "Hungry Hungry Hippos" board game on the television today. I hadn't seen one in years, and hadn't really thought about the game. My cousins had one, but we didn't play it very much, and I think by the time they got it I was a little old to enjoy that game.
I'm trying to think of the boardgames we had in my family.
We had a lot of the "classics" - I particularly liked "Clue," both because of the logic aspect and because of the gory background. And we had Scrabble, but didn't play that a lot, because my brother and I were not that evenly matched as kids, being five years apart.
We had Monopoly and played it by our own, somewhat eccentric, house rules. For example, if someone landed on a property in the early rounds of the game, and didn't want to buy it, it just went unsold - we didn't do the "auctions" like the "Official" rules suggest. I think we had some other differences...I think we had no limit on number of houses or hotels on a site, though usually we never got that far in the game...we'd get bored, someone would propose "calling" the game, and we'd either just quit, or declare the person with the most money at that point the winner.
We had other board games, I'm sure...I think we had one of those with the "pop o matic" dice, where they were under a little dome so they wouldn't get lost.
Oh, and we had "Sorry." I liked Sorry, too. I particularly liked getting to send people back to Start. (But you have to say, "sorry!")
The games I mostly remember playing as a kid, though, were the outside, running-around-type games. I lived across the street from a large family where all the kids were close in age (there was one set of twins and the rest were stair-stepped). We used to play hide and seek a lot (which was awesome back behind their house because it was a big forested area and had lots of places to hide). And we played something like Hot Potato, as I remember, but I don't remember how we did the timing. (Maybe someone borrowed their mom's kitchen timer?)
And we played HORSE, which I was never very good at (I'm still not, as my youth group kids will attest.) (Does everyone know HORSE? This is a basketball shooting game where you get "letters" if you miss, the first one who spells HORSE is out).
And we played four-square, but again, the rules we followed were very idiosyncratic and were different from how kids play it here.
And we played Smear the....politically-incorrect-term-for-a-gay-person, except I didn't know what that meant back in those days. (Actually, Smear is a pretty fun game as long as everyone's about the same size and no one's so fragile that they're likely to get hurt).
The best games though, in my opinion, were the ones that required hiding or being able to sneak and then run fast. We played hide and seek, or, more commonly, the Kick the Can variant (where people would hide, It would either go seeking or hide somewhere near where the can was, and the goal was for one of the hiders to sneak in and kick the can - "freeing" everyone else and condemning It to another round as It). Or we played Capture the Flag, which, if you have a big group of people and a large area to play it in, is a really really fun game. (I remember that mostly from camp, where we had groups of 20 or more people and a huge lawn to play on)
We also played sort-of a pickup version of flag football (with bandannas in the back pockets as flags) but usually we didn't have enough people to have real teams. And mostly not a big enough place.
There were also the games we tried once, or the games that required specific conditions. Like flashlight tag - you have to be allowed to be out after dark somewhere that's dark, and everyone has to have a flashlight.
I guess we also played Freeze Tag some, I had forgotten that.
I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of. We also did the typical kid stuff - water balloon wars, and trying to set toys on fire, and making things like obstacle courses that then the other people had to run through.
What games do YOU remember from childhood? What were your favorites?
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Childhood games
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7 comments:
When I was five and six we lived in a fairly new area of metro St. Louis. There was a large undeveloped area across the street from my house and it was full of small gullies that were perfect as trenches for that age. The soil was perfect for breaking off a small clod of dirt and we used to have hours and hours of dirt clod wars, running through our trenches and popping up to throw a harmless clump of dirt.
As far as board games, all the ones you mentioned plus "The Game of Life".
Oooh, this is fun. We never lasted long in Monopoly, either! We played all those, and Connect Four, Parcheesi, Payday, Perfection (although the way the board would pop up startled the living daylights out of me). Apparently any game starting with "P"! We played Hot Potato, too, with my cousins at my grandparents', and trusted someone to keep his/her eyes closed, who would shake a noisemaker to end the round.
This is definitely one we played way back when being boys or girls didn't matter: we invented a crazy game in a friend's den, which was fairly narrow--we'd all lie down in a row, then roll across each other, one by one, to one end of the room, until there was a complete pile-up. Then we'd undo it and start for the other side of the room. I have no idea why that amused us so much. Then again, we also loved playing all the 45s in the house and doing gymnastic ribbon routines on the front lawn.
Oh yeah, I remember all of these (though I was WAY too old for Hungry Hungry Hippo when it came out). Played all the rest though. Sorry was the earliest board game one I can remember playing (early 60s).
Other board games not mentioned: Stratego (I played this once, I think, but didn't much enjoy it). Risk was another good one.
As for outside games, aside from the ones mentioned (and the obvious others like Tag), my favorite (and favorite of all the young teen boys I palled around with, especially in Boy Scouts) was British Bulldog. It was kind of like tackle football, but with no football, only tackling. Also it was kind of like tag but with tackling. Also kind of like Red Rover, but with tackling.
Okay, in actuality, it was pretty much tackling only. This was probably not wise for someone like me who has worn glasses since third grade (insert dirty joke here) but I survived intact.
Basic idea: One person started in the middle as "it". Everybody else, upon the call "British Bulldog" ran across the field. Anyone tackled stayed in the middle with "it" for the next round. It continued this way until the last person tackled became "it" for the next round.
And a good time was had by all.
Well, except for the adult leaders of our Scout patrol. They learned in one easy lesson that middle-aged men should not play this game ;)
Dodgeball was my favorite outdoor game ... as well as tug-of-war. I also loved the typical team sports - kickball, baseball ...
We had Candyland and Monopoly ... Boggle came later (I still play Boggle - even just with myself - yes, I'm pathetic) ... I ADORED Battleship ... oh and "Life" -which, in retrospect, is a truly disturbing game - but we loved it as kids.
We also were really into card games.
And I remember my cousins getting Operation - which overtook our lives - it was a game that required batteries, first of all ... and it required intense concentration to not kill your patient as you removed his spleen or his eyeballs.
And then there were just the general outdoor games involving "mud wars" with different factions in the neighborhood, and we had forts - and we put camo paint on our faces and stalked each other and had ambushes ... all great fun until our mothers called us into supper.
Just counting the kids on our street, there were 12 boys and 1 girl -- me. Add to that the Catholics* across the alley and THEIR 11 kids plus about 15-20 more kids from various neighboring street, and yeah, we had some good times.
We lived on a cul-de-sac which made a perfect baseball diamond, so we played a LOT of baseball/softball/stickball/wiffle ball. We played tag and hide-n-go-seek and had free rein in each other's houses. None of our mothers worked outside the home except Mrs. Kigin, the mom of the 11, and she only worked weekends at the hospital as a nurse. Probably for the peace and quiet.
My summer memories are a blur of green grass, clover necklaces, popsicles, no TV, swimming in the creek at the Boy Scout park, you know, being a free-range kid.
The only board games I remember were my brother's, mostly Battleship, Risk, and Stratego. We had Life too. The Poorhouse always disturbed me.
Oops, I forgot my asterisk!
*Mrs. Kigin had a child a year for the first six years of her marriage. The first four were boys. She's still alive, but canonization has already begun.
Oh, great post! Good times growing up. Believe it or not, it wasn't all Atari for me, though I did get one through the Cub Scouts. (I sold 630 candy bars for a fundraiser and won it as a prize. Mom got a pocket calculator out of the deal. I was such a thoughtful lad!)
I had to post about this - and there's a pictoral present for you for clicking!
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