Childhood games/plays

[TerokNor]

While I was just looking at the Childhood dreams post I got a memory in my head, that made me chuckle somewhat and blush a bit and led to the question: What were the plays/games you enjoyed playing as a kid the most?

I loved to do roll playing with my cousins and friends.
With my cousins we often played X-Men, Visionaries, Turtles, The three musketeers and things like that. My roles in there were usually Wolverine, the Visionary-guy who could change into a wolf or fox or so, Raphael, d´Artagnan. Also the usual police and robbers game, though we even made criminal records for us, some of us were murderes and rapers, though without really understanding what rape is, just that its bad and you go to jail for it, we tried to overtrump the other with having the record with the worst crimes....the others were the police..hmm well I never was the police..achem... police somehow was never the wanted role, so the younger cousins had to be the police, if they wanted or not, we older ones decidet.
With other friends it were things like The little vampire, Animal-family, Cats and Starlight Express (the musicals) and more...usually not so rough and wild plays like with my cousins.

Anyway, what made me chuckle, was a memory of when we played "Teenagers". I think we were around ..9. We loved to play teens. We played two types of teens, the younger characters we invented were 16 (that was the "cool age" for us) and troublemakers. They played truant from school, tried to run away, stole money, drank alcohol and smoked joints. We used clothes pins for that.
The "old" characters who tried to rein the young in were 18 years old. I also remember we were thinking of making one character 21 and decidet against it, because who would want to play someone THAT ancient????
When my one cousin played an "old" character he tried to rein the young ones in with jumping on them, pinning them flat to the ground. I was the victim most of the time...if not always! He sat on top of me with my arms secured under his knees and hitting me in the face right and left, right and left while I just screamed and laughed to the same time. He was stronger than I, so when I tried to pin him on the ground afterwards it was me who ended up in the same position again. Oh he so enjoyed that and adobted this for most other plays, but it was quite painful for me! Than again I loved to provoke him every chance I got and knew exactly how it would end.
Though it may not sound that way, we had so much fun and never though that play silly or so. But I do wonder how did we get such things in our heads?
Guess we dealed with the topic "do and don´ts" at that time and we had the luck that we were allowed to run "wild" inside and outside and were not always under supervision by adults. Adults got to see us only to meal-times and bed-time.

So what games do you remember? Did you play that rough as well?

TerokNor

 

[thestrangequark]

For a long time my favorite make-believe was Robin Hood, even though I was a girl. One of the great things about growing up in Seattle is that, even though it's a big(gish) city, there's a lot of nature about. I used to make my own bows and arrows out of sticks and strings of ivy: by the time I was 8 I had them firing 30 feet.

As far as toys were concerned I liked Barbie, but my obsessive compulsive tendencies usually prevented me from actually playing with them: my little sister and I would lay all the Barbies out first (we had tons -- ours and the hand-me-downs from our mom and older sisters), and take turns choosing which ones we wanted. Then we'd lay out all the Barbie clothes and take turns choosing how to dress them. Then we'd spend ages doing their hair. By the time we got around to the playing part we were bored with Barbie and wanted to move onto something else.

I also played Scrabble from a very young age.

 

[Spot's Meow]

^The obsessive compuslive "choosing" behavior was common for me as well. My sisters and I would pick two movies each to watch, then line them up, put them under a blanket, and mix them. Then take turns choosing one at random. We rarely actually watched the movies afterwards... We also "played" cars by taking out all of our Hot Wheels and lining them up single file across the floor, then slowly moved each one in the line forward until...well, it was mostly the lining up part that we liked. I am a chronic organizer.

My sisters and I played school all the time as well. Usually I was the teacher. My mom worked in a school so she would bring home extra handouts that the teachers had, those blue xerox copies that you never see anymore. I have always loved being in school, so this was one of my favorite games. I especially loved springing pop quizzes on my sisters. Of course grading papers was the best part.

I also have fond memories of playing Samantha. By that I mean, Samantha from the American Girl series. I had all of her books and loved them, so when I was about 8 or 9 my mom bought me this Samantha kit that included scripts for a little play you could put on based on the books. That was so much fun! We had our two neighbors, a brother and sister, join in, and we always planned to put on an actual performance at some point, but could never get all the way through "rehearsals."

And lastly, one of my fondest childhood memories is playing Dinoville with the boy that lived next door. His backyard was mostly dirt and we both had lots of little plastic dinosaurs, so we would create rivers in his backyard with the hose and find plants to make trees. We would make little buildings out of whatever was lying around and play make believe with our dinosaurs for hours. There was also a faction of army men who lived on the other side of the river and were always trying to destroy the dinos. Our favorite dinosaur was a red brontosaurus.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Great topic, TerokNor! It makes me recall some very fond memories.

When my sister and I were very young (I was about 5-6 and my sister 4-5), we played some very formulaic games involving physical matters like running in circles or wrestling. It was probably because we lived in a flat and had no outdoor space - we needed to let off energy and so we adapted to our limited space. My favourite was a dinosaur-play game called "Tyrannosaurus and Hypsilophodon" (I was a dinosaur fan so I knew the names, though I must shamefully point out that in reality these two genera would not have interacted ). Basically, the game is as follows:

1) Designate either yourself or your sibling "Tyrannosaurus", with the other being "Hypsilophodon".

2) Run in a circle, with Tyrannosaurus chasing Hypsilophodon.

3) Whenever he or she is ready, Hysilophodon "trips" and "falls".

4) Tyrannosaurus eats Hypsilophodon (a form of controlled wrestling).

5) Switch roles and repeat.

There was another game, no doubt inspired by The Lion King, called Lions and Hyenas. One of us was a sleeping lion or sleeping hyena and the other was a hyena (if it was a lion sleeping) or a lion cub (if it was a hyena). It didn't really matter which, but we needed some variety. The setting was the living room, for reasons that will become apparent. The one not "sleeping" was to "sneak" past the one who was, until the sleeping one suddenly awoke and "attacked". The one being attacked then had the goal of reaching the sofa, which was apparently the equivalent of running into a church and crying "sanctuary!" There was much wrestling as the attacker tried to pull the victim away from the sofa and the victim tried to reach it. Eventually the victim made it or gave up.

Around age 7-10, when playing with friends, we enjoyed making villages and zoos (often involving dinosaurs, because I was still a dino fan and had lots of dinosaur toys). We had reasonably complex storylines too.

At school, ages 8-11, my friends and I had several rather complex games with ongoing stories. The best was known as "vampires". Half of us were vampires or their minions, the other half were regular children. The story was, at its most basic level, the struggle to gain control of a spellbook. The brave children had one half, the vampires the other half. Whoever had both halves would gain its power. The vampires had several advantages - they could turn invisible, fly and even retreat to a literal World Of Their Own through an energy vortex (it involved extending your arms and then spinning round and round across the playground). But they also had a disadvantage - discs that stored their life energy and which could be destroyed or reprogrammed. My friend Sonny was the Count, the leader of the vampires. I was his vampire bat, his familiar. Another friend was the Countess, and another a robot built by the vampires. Then there were two ordinary vampires loyal to the Count and Countess. The other half of the group were the children. There were many engaging story arcs, one of which involved me and the Countess stealing a violin behind the Count's back. That may or may not translate to Adult as the Countess cheating on the Count with their bat familiar.

Finally, from 11 through to mid teens, my sister, myself and our friend had the Lego War. Basically, using our friend's massive lego collection, we each built a city representing a nation-state, populated it with characters, and played a massive wartime drama involving co-ordination between the three of us. We did sometimes try to let others play, but they weren't on our wavelength and it didn't really work. We'd always object to one of their developments if they destroyed a character we were engaged with, for instance. They'd point out that the three of us always made it up as we went along, which was true. But we were on the same wavelength and just knew what would make a good story and what wouldn't. It was always about the story, not the fighting. Two random fun facts!: 1) The agreed-upon best Lego War ever ended with a show-down inside Hell itself, when my sister's city of evil sourcerors opened a demonic portal. 2) The agreed-upon best character ever made was one of mine named "Joe", who was (I kid you not) a mix between Indiana Jones and Joe Pasquale.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I used to play the usual, He-Man, Ninja Turtles, Transformers etc.. role playing. I'd come up with fairly complex (for a kid) story lines. I would also get all my action figures and basically make up my own series using characters from a variety of action figure lines. Once again i would come up with complex story lines and really basic arcs etc...

I also had a quite a dinosaur collection, most warm days i'd be out in the back yard playing in the dirt with my dinosaurs. I was heavily into nature documentaries at the time and would 'narrate' to no one in particular what was going on with dino's on with my best david attenborough impersonation.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I also had a quite a dinosaur collection, most warm days i'd be out in the back yard playing in the dirt with my dinosaurs. I was heavily into nature documentaries at the time and would 'narrate' to no one in particular what was going on with dino's on with my best david attenborough impersonation.

Oh yes, I'd do that too. In fact, I have right here at my side, as I type this, the Iguanadon model which was always my favourite "actor" in the documentary. He was retained long after the other dinosaur models/toys were thrown out and is now my mascot of sorts.

 

[mari]

My sisters and I used to put on plays, usually based on Aesop's fables or fairy tales since the little one only knew those stories. I also would put them both in our red wagon and drag them around the backyard playing "time machine"... I was kind of a conductor/tour guide and would announce, "Now we are in the 1930s, during the Depression. Everyone is poor!" Eventually we'd get to "The Future! Where we have flying cars! And robots to do our chores!" The Future usually was around 1996, when I would turn 16 and get my own car-flying license.

Once we got to high school, we got to do real re-enacting of the Civil War-through-early Victorian period at the town museum. I've spent many interesting evenings with Mrs. Lincoln, ad libbing a personal history that includes Teacher College and explains why I'm a spinster.

 

[Theodore Jay Miller]

A memorable one for me is the "strong girl" game. I'm the oldest, my brother is next, and my sister is the youngest. So when my sister was little, we'd play a game where my brother and I would pretend to attack my sister, she'd push us away, and we'd throw ourselves back like we were toosed away with super strength.

 

[iguana_tonante]

My childhood games mostly consisted of playing with LEGOs, watching cartoons and reading the encyclopaedia and/or the dictionary. My inner nerd was fully formed at a very young age.

 

[thestrangequark]

^You want nerdiness? At 9 I built a model of the enterprise using two paper plates for the saucer section and cardboard toilet paper tubes as the warp nacelles!

 

[iguana_tonante]

Well, that's nerdy and arty. Very you.

 

[Opus]

We (about 20 kids in our neighborhood) painted a four-square box at the end of dead-end street. We all signed our names next to it when it was done. We'd play for hours in the summer, at least until the street lights came on. That four-square box was still there until a few years ago when the town repaved the road. We also played kick-the-can, redlight/greenlight, mother may I, wagon races. The girls would (and one boy) would play Miss America. The rest of the boys would judge and we'd always pick the boy to win so we could sing, "Here he is - Miss America!"

A friend and I had a great Star Wars collection (including an Eagle I from Space:1999). I still have it. I also still have my Lego space collection and a bunch mint Hot Wheels cars from the 70s. My brother and I would have double elimination races that would last all day.

All this, and it doesn't even seem to scratch the surface. We had woods that we'd play in for hours. We dug holes, built forts, road our bikes everywhere, climbed trees, played war with hockey sticks, bought way too much penny candy at the local store, flew kites, roller skated at the local rink. In the winter we had snowball fights and went sledding. We played all kinds of sports - wiffle ball, street hockey, football, etc.

And still we'd sometimes find ourselves saying we were bored!

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Let me think:

The very first childhood thing I remember pretending to be was He-Man, although at one point I also wanted to be the Incredible Hulk and smash things. (For a costume party I even dressed up as the Incredible Hulk complete with green body paint. ) Make of that what you will.

Aside from that, I had my swing in the garden, and, later, my bicycle, which was my best friend for the entirety of my childhood. Some of the best memories I had involved that bike.

Aside from THAT, I'd also allow a go on our home computer (a BBC Micro, the best home computer in the world), and would spend time programming stuff or playing games, or both. When not on the computer indoors, we'd be watching TV in the evenings, undoubtedly dominated by what the parents would want to watch, unless it was Star Trek of course, or a decent family film.

We also learned Scrabble and, later, Monopoly. (Even more so when the TV broke. ) I remember being not too bad at both of them, although when it came to Monopoly I'm not exactly the best winner or the best loser.

I had LEGO®. Tons of LEGO® yet still not enough bricks to make what I wanted to make. My magnum opus, a spaceship, is still in its final form in my room somewhere, untouched. Maybe if I had a few more bricks...

After that, I'd settle down in bed reading my favourite children's encyclopaedias - I had two, and had fun comparing the two for inaccuracies.

Beyond that, most of my childhood involved playing music - piano and violin - in both classical and (with the violin) folk genres, as well as singing, taking the obligatory lessons, and taking part in the local music festivals (and winning a few competitions, especially the singing). I'm glad to say that the music has stayed with me the most. I also was entered into dancing lessons, despite the obvious ridicule that ensued, but I stuck with it and as part of a dancing team we'd also do well in local and national competitions, winning a number of contests for the school. Sadly, most of those days are long past now, but who knows...

So yeah, apart from the games and bike and other things, my childhood was a lot of singing, dancing and music playing and entering contests and things. Wasted? Not sure. Worth it? In hindsight, definitely. Regrets? Sure: not having a skateboard, not having the same computer as the other kids in school so we could swap tapes, not having a personal cassette player in my room (it belonged to my big sister) and not starting a record collection - but the only decent music in my childhood was non-chart stuff like acid house, rap and indie rock - not being able to get Radio 1 on my radio, and not being interested in Star Wars until I was 14.

I still have my LEGO® and my music, somewhere.