Gwen's away and the Peeps will play...what?

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Okay, what was your favorite game as a child? Adult games at parties? Games you like to play on kids trick or treating? Games you play on telephone sales people?

-- Anonymous, October 13, 2000

Answers

When I was a child, the biggest treat was when we were allowed to play "Spotlight" - after dark hide-and-seek with flashlights. The whole neighbourhood would join in (and the presence of older siblings, etc., was really the only reason the younger ones were ever allowed to play). Now that I look back on it I can't imagine what was so thrilling... well, I can make a guess that the older kids had some less-than-wholesome motives in hiding behind bushes after dark, but I think for the wee ones it was just the thrill of being out past dark playing a big game you weren't often allowed to play.

I still play "got your nose" with my nephew. We both know the truth about the impossibility of grabbing noses, but we play along for each other's benefit.

The last thought I have to share is that once, at a birthday party when I was about 7, I cheated at Pin the Tail on the Donkey because I wanted to beat my friend who always always always won things. I said I couldn't see under the blindfold but I could. Know what I won for my first foray into deceit and underhandedness? A pencil. Truly, the rewards for dishonesty are few.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000


There is also the "look I can move my thumb off my hand" game with kids. I learned that and the nose one when I was a wee one. There is a CD I heard parts of on NPR I have got to get. This guy got really feed-up with telemarketers and so when they would call, he would buy into whatever they were selling and then lay on an outrageous reason for needing their services. Like he asked a carpet cleaner how fast they could get over to his house 'cause there was blood everywhere. Their responses were hilarious. I think the cops showed up a few times.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000

I always liked "spin the bottle". James

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000

I played pretty much the same game as Susan. I remember getting so scared and excited that I just couldn't handle it any more and had to go back inside. Pretty lame, I know. Maybe I'm just a chicken...

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000

"Kick the Can" was always a big hit. We lived on a cul-de-sac, so relatively few cars to disrupt us. Of course, it was always so much better when the big kids played and, of course, being out very late on summer nights was a thrill. ---

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000


I like to play tricks on the little kids coming around on Halloween. One year I rented a gorilla outfit to answer the door in. One little girl was struck absolutely speechless and made tinkle in her Good Fairy costume and a little puddle on the porch. I felt awful and we invited her and her mother in and changed her underpants with a pair left from a little nephew visit. But otherwise it was a riot. The kids I enjoyed the most were the ones who acted like nothing was wrong...completely deadpan.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000

Bubba, can I come trick-or-treating at your place?!

-- Anonymous, October 14, 2000

Absolutely. We'll have a few drinks and take turns answering the door.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2000

As a kid, I had a great neighborhood full of kids. Kick the can was lots of fun, but probably our favorite game was "War". Choose up sides and then run around shooting each other. Hey, these were more innocent times, okay? Other stuff: racing around the block on our bikes, playing baseball with a tennis ball in the empty lot across the street and watching my brother hit homer after homer across the ball field, across the street and over our two-story house (!). Maybe best of all were the pine cone wars. we had so many pine trees in our neighborhood in southern Louisiana that every fall was prime pine needle and pine cone season. We'd literally have so much pine straw that we'd build mammoth pine straw forts and then bomb the shit out of each other from our many garbage cans full of hard, heavy and dangerous pine cones. :-) Ah, youth.

Every Halloween, I give away tons of candy and I always wear this great black shirt with all these white scary skulls all over it. Most people never mention it, but the teens from about 13-16 think I'm cool as anything (a lot of kids discover skulls at that age).

-- Anonymous, October 16, 2000


Hide-and-go seek in the dark. That was the coolest. And jumping in a big pile of leaves in the fall. And building/climbing into a treehouse that you made all by yourself, even if it was just a couple of boards mostly wedged between some relatively low branches.

-- Anonymous, October 16, 2000


I was just talking to a friend of mine about this - we loved Red Light, Green Light, 123, Freeze Tag, and nightly Kickball games.

-- Anonymous, October 16, 2000

Pine cone wars! Yeah. We had dirtclod wars. We chose sides and one group went up to the cliff top and the other ones had to fight there way up to the top and force the other guys to retreat. There were always more guys on the bottom side of the war because it was really hard getting to the top. The top guys had more range but fewer dirt clods. The bottom guys had more dirt clods but had limited range so you had to endure the fusilade of dirt clods and get close to the top and then bring numbers to bear and force the other guys into retreat. It was fun. Kinda like paint ball today. james

-- Anonymous, October 16, 2000

I used to play "Doctor Weenie" with the neighbor girl under the front porch. She was a year older than me and much more experienced. A tutor of consumate skill and discretion. I often wonder who Cindy Fulton is playing doctor with now.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2000

I used to play "Doctor Weenie" with the neighbor girl under the front porch. She was a year older than me and much more experienced. A tutor of consumate skill and discretion. We were five and six, I believe. I often wonder who Cindy Fulton is playing doctor with now.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2000

my daddy would go all out for Halloween when I was little. He would rig up the stereo by the windows, blaring the spooky haunted house LP and turn out the lites...and one year he ran a wire from the second story window down to the front steps...and would release a big rubber bat careening down the line towards the approaching tricker treaters...one little girl ran away screaming as the "bat" attacked her.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2000


Joanne, we played those, too. But we called it 123 Redlight. And we played Mother, May I? and "Guns".

I have always loved prank calls. There's something wrong with me.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2000


James, what you described sounds a lot like the final battle of the movie Glory, except less bloody (I hope). :-)

Oh, and a thrilling game around my old neighborhood in Louisiana when I was a child is commonly called "Ding Dong Ditch", although we called it something far more offensive and shameful. :-(

The only games I've played with groups of adults are "Trivial Pursuit" and I think I played "Pictionary" once. When I was little kid, we used to play "Monopoly", of course. I love the board game "Othello" and play it whenever I get the chance.

Okay, this is more of a prank than a game, but when I was a kid, my older brother, a bunch of our friends and I used to block streets with old Christmas trees. It would be New Year's Eve or thereabouts and people would have their trees out on the curb for the trash pickup. At night, we'd drag trees into the street to make a yuletide roadblock, then hide in the bushes and shadows to snicker while angry (and drunk) motorists would struggle to get the trees out of the road. We did this every year. At least once there was a chase, but we all got away. :-)

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2000


Another "game" we played was "burn some old tires at the beach when the fog was really really thick and it was spooky out.". Ok. Red Foxx I'm not but the game was cool. I lived at the beach and we'd go collect old tires for a couple weeks before the fogs set in and when it got really foggy we'd haul out our tires and set them alight. I lived in an area that has a hundred fifty foot cliff above the beach and in the fog from the top of the cliff it looked way weird. It would glow red at first and then it would pick up and get really bright. It looked really spooky and we'd pretend a UFO had crashed and the aliens were after us. The cops would come and they couldn't put out the fire so they let it burn down or the tide would come in and with a long loud hissing sound it would put the fire out sputtering all the while. We would always do it at low tide in Nov-Jan when the tides were lowest and well away from the cliff. It was so much fun. What can I say. We were deprived kids. Or is that depraved. James

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2000

We use to make snow forts and have snowball fights in the winter. Most of the snow balls were ice balls with rocks in the middle sometimes (we had nice kids in my neighborhood). Also snow angels and writing your name in the snow. The girls could make yellow roses as writing your name was kinda hard for them. It would usually look like '''**''.

-- Anonymous, October 19, 2000

Is everyone playing hide and go seek today with nobody doing the seek part? I know ya'll ain't working that hard.

-- Anonymous, October 19, 2000

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