What were your favorite games to play as a child? When we were kids we lived in town. My parents owned another rental property up the street, that had a big yard. We were fortunate enough that most of the renters allowed us to use the yard for our favorite game: Kickball!

We loved to play and did most every evening. We usually had a lot of work to do all day, either around the house or helping our dad, so after supper we would head for the big yard. Seems lke word always got around, and kids would start gathering there waiting for enough people to show up to get started. There would be kids from 5 to 18, and even some adults would come and watch, and give advice sometimes!

We always had the greatest time. We would play every night all summer long, and even into the fall months. We played until it was so dark we couldn't see, then Mothers would start yelling for kids to come home! I can hear there voices still, echoing through the dark calling the children home!

A great memory indeed!

-- Melissa (me@home.net), January 22, 2002

Answers

Yes! There were a million kids in my neighborhoods (big, Catholic population)from large families. I remember making tents on the clothes line and sleeping out. Playing Kick the can. Being able to ride my bike all over town. Putting a baseball card on the fender so it made a cool noise. Skating and tobagganing all winter--every day it seemed! Winters were really winters then.

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), January 22, 2002.

Kickball, jumprope, jacks, hopscotch. Another favourite activity was building treehouses, forts, or clubhouses. We also had a creek behind our house near Cooperstown, NY, where the neighbourhood cooled off. I remember one big, flat rock that was somewhat hollowed out. It would collect water from the creek; I loved to sit there and play it was my bathtub.

We also played house a lot. We had flat rocks for steaks (which we never had in real life), round rocks for potatoes. I loved making the "salad" with leaves, disected dandelions, berries, seeds, etc. The "dressing" was water with various tiny seeds and finely shredded leaves to resemble Italian dressing.

Growing up in the mid-70's, play-acting Little House On the Prairie was popular among the girls. We had long dresses and bonnets, and we could get the boys to play if they felt like "driving" the "wagons". Parts were assigned, and I always wanted to be Laura.

I liked going anywhere that resembled a farm. At the homes of friends, we would climb apple trees in an orchard or build tunnels and hiding places in a hay barn.

-- Cathy N. (keeper8@attcanada.ca), January 22, 2002.

I used to play outside with about nine other childen when I was ten , all brothers and sisters that lived side by side. On those fall cool nights, we played Hide and seek forever. It was a special occassion to stay up until nine thirty chasing little shadows on our dead end road. In the winter time, one of my favorite things I did was play house . The dead end would get all the snow from the plows, so we'd end up with a big pile. So we'd dig huge holes, make houses, chairs, couches, all out of snow. In my friends basement, we would turn off all the lights, have things on the floor as well as people. Then we would lead one person through, like it was a haunted house. Hungry Hippos was one of my favorite games from the store though.

-- jillian (daffodil_skunk83@hotmail.com), January 22, 2002.

I had 2 brothers, no sisters, and lived in a neighborhood with no girls until I was at least in 6th grade, so everything we did was pretty much boy stuff. We did play some "regular" games, like kickball, baseball, basketball, badminton, rollerskating, etc., I also remember a lot of Hide & Seek (especially fun on summer nights), Red Rover, Duck-Duck-Goose, Button-Button, etc. Also played soldier (we were all big fans of TV shows like "Combat"), and the occasional cowboys/Indians or cops & robbers. What I remember most though is the non-traditional games.

We all lived on smaller acreages in a semi-rural area so had lots of play area and a large woods well stocked with wildlife, right across the road from us. A creek ran through our property. We hiked and biked a lot, did picnic lunches in the woods & had fern fights. Water fights, with water balloons or just a couple of hoses were common. We'd get a long rope and play tug-o-war. One of our favorite games was to don our dads' white t-shirts, choose up teams and have blackberry fights out in the woods. I guess this was a forerunner to playing paintball. We spent a lot of time following animal tracks (including cougar!) out in the forest and making plaster casts of the tracks. We'd take a deck of cards and clothes-pin them to the spokes on our bikes and race up and down the road making a terrible racket.

Another favorite entertainment on summer evenings was snitching the big lids from our mothers' Tupperware collection, nailing them to a long stick, then we'd ride our bikes down the road holding the lid on a stick up in the air to smack the flying ants that came out at dusk. We put on dog shows, "talent" shows, magic shows and the occasional circus. We built many a tree fort. A trip to the creek yielded pet frogs, tadpoles, salamandars and such, and we had rock skipping contests. Of course someone always fell in and got muddy (often me). My mother thought I should act like a lady so I frequently had my backside blistered by her as I couldn't stay away from the treasures the creek offered. I always had a pet mouse, a snake or two and often an injured or baby bird that the boys would bring me to care for.

We also had a huge fenced yard with a playhouse, huge sandbox area, and a large swing set (made from pipe cemented into the ground), complete with trapeze bars and teeter-totter. I can't remember ever using this as it was intended. We walked the fence like a balance beam, the tetter-totter was used for a game of "chicken" (someone would bail off and leave the other kid to crash), and we'd have contests to see who could bail out of the swings the furthest. Like I said, I got a lot of whippings. :)

In the winter we built snow forts, had team snowball fights, and dragged huge pieces of cardboard miles away to the nearest death-defying hill to slide down. My Samoyede dog unwillingly gave us sled rides.

It was a rare day when any of us were bored enough to come indoors and watch tv, and we all knew better than to complain to our parents about not having anything to do! That usually earned us a trip outdoors to rake leaves or weed the garden.

-- Lenette (kigervixen@webtv.net), January 22, 2002.

Cathy we used to do the same thing, make pretend food out of rocks and things. We also made spaghetti form long dandelion stems!

Jillian we used to make igloos,and then we would sit in them and play. That and sled-riding was our main winter fun. We would stay outside for hours!

We also loved to ride bikes, and another favorite was "obstacle courses". We would set up all these things around our yard. We might have to crawl under the picnic table, hop to the swing, jump rope, all kinds of neat climbing things etc... We would use my Dad's stopwatch, and we had an old clip-board we would use to write down the times. Lots of kids spent many hours in our yard playing this! They would come and ask me to set one up so we could play.

I LOVED to read, so they had to pry me away from my books to do this. My Mom and Dad would be gone sometimes, so we would make big homemade pizzas and have obstacle courses. I haven't thought of that for years!! Need to get my kids to do that this summer!

-- Melissa (me@home.net), January 22, 2002.

Melissa, the mention of bicycles reminded me of a story about a friend of mine. She and her brother used to play "chicken" with their bikes on their back-in-the-boonies dirt road. She was always the one to swerve at the last minute, but after a while she got tired of her brother calling her "chicken". So one day she was absolutely determined NOT to swerve. They backed their bikes up till they were about a half mile apart, then pedalled toward each other full steam. Her brother never dreamed she would stay on course, and she thought he would swerve at the last minute. They ended up slamming head on into each other, bikes and both children flying in all directions. Somehow, they came out of it with no bones broken and no concussions, but they were badly bruised and cut up. And when their mom got done with them...well, they never played chicken again!

-- Cathy N. (keeper8@attcanada.ca), January 22, 2002.

We lived in the country. We had the coolest play house in the horse shed.!! We loved to play(chase!)with the chickens. There were several girls that would come over and we would spend all day making up dances to songs or playing house in the club house. When you mentioned bicycles it reminded me of the time my sister, me and several neighbor girls decided to take apart our bicycles. My parents moved from that house when I was 20. The bicycles were still in pieces in the back under years of dust and cans!!!!!!!!

-- Micheale from SE Kansas (mbfrye@totelcsi.net), January 22, 2002.