We Remember Them Well
What is that, you say? Why, the games we used to play as kids. Maybe you have your favorites also? Here are some of mine: playing ‘corn toss’ (had to use corn toss boards for these games), Old Maids, Dominoes, and ‘one-two-three red light’ were among some of the games we loved as kids. Being from a poor farming family, we were always looking for ways to entertain ourselves as kids. I can’t remember who introduced us to this, but another thing we loved doing was taking old tin cans and drilling holes at the tops of them and then putting in twine to use as ‘handles.’ We would pretend we were tall and walk (stomp?) around on these cans for quite a while, using the twine wrapped around our hands to stabilize the cans on our feet, happy with such ‘simple pleasures.’ Another game we liked playing and that was a favorite was ‘blind man’s bluff.’ Remember that one? We used to get together with cousins from across the field to play this. Even when older (my husband and I were well into our twenties, married and living in our own home at this point) we would play this game, as we often had children stay with us overnight for the weekend (and of course needed some kind of entertainment for them). We soon found out that these children loved blind-man’s bluff as much as we adults did. One time I remember a neighbor man (who later became a good friend of ours) came over to see what we were up to, as he had been hearing lots of laughing from across the street (we got pretty loud playing this game and living in town as we did back then, people lived close to each other). We, at the time, had a house that was getting remodeled so the whole dining room/living room areas were pretty much empty due to construction projects. This was great for playing this game–lots of playing space! All we had to do was move a few pieces of furniture against the walls. When our neighbor came over to investigate we asked him to join in with us. He was kind of a reserved type of guy and hesitated at first; but he decided, oh why not…looks like fun! So he got chosen as the next ‘victim,’ er, uh, candidate for blindman’s bluff. We and the kids that were visiting had a high old time, running from the neighbor, trying to dodge his hand from ‘tagging’ any one of us. But eventually one of us got selected–my husband. My husband loved playing this game and would get a bit carried away, running (when he really shouldn’t have been running being blindfolded) after us, and to this day, the neighbor still reminds us what happened this one time. We had one dining room chair sitting in the middle of the room and my husband came running through the area and slammed into it, actually breaking the one leg off. Fortunately he didn’t break HIS leg that day! (And fortunately this wasn’t an expensive, irreplaceable chair!) But we were none the worse for wear and have fond memories of these games we played, even the blind-man’s bluff ‘episode’ from when we were in our 20′s.
