Looking for a Chinese Jumprope but a pair of Click-Klacks will do

It’s a warm summer evening, the kind of night that follows a late afternoon sunshower, the type of weather that begs you to be outside and enjoy. As I finish my dinner, and wait for my 11 year old daughter Hayley to clean her plate, my mind starts to drift to another decade, a simpler much different time. I begin to hum a one-hit wonder that always made me feel good inside…My name is Cindy, when we get married, we’re gonna have a baby or two..I’m gonna let her visit her grandma, that’s what I’m gonna do..” How great was that playground in my mind?.

Quite suddenly, I am brought back to the reality of June in the year 2009 by my Hayley with the all-too present request pleading “Mom, can I please go on the computer for a little while, Marisa and Maura are waiting for me online and I need to play Yoville”. The usual and expected reply to follow does come somewhat naturally. “Sure honey, but only for about a half an hour okay, and then I want you to do something else.. After I’m done with the dishes, I’ll let you know it’s time.” I think to myself an absolutely ridiculous thought. Meeting her friends online in Yoville? Where the heck is Yoville anyway, and what happened to meeting at the corner? Today’s kids meet online to play games. Gone are the days of hours spent playing outside and actually interacting in person with friends. Is this a good thing, or is it a bad thing? I’d like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

I’d like to invite you all to share my daydream with me, and go on a trip to a playground in my mind, to perhaps a summer night in June many years ago. You can name the city or the state, how old you were, who your friends were, what type of neighborhood you lived in. All of that information can be as different as you and I are. One thing, however, that I want to learn by writing this hub is what games you played, and what toys you played with.

You may be thinking to yourself that this has to be the most ridiculous hub you ever attempted to read, and I hope that may hold some truth. The point is that I often remember hours upon hours spent playing outside until the street lights came on when I was a child. Living in the same town now that I did then is a constant but many other factors are not.

Sadly, I cannot remember the last time my child went outside to play with other kids. I’ve never seen her draw or play hopscotch, let alone even hearing of a “Chinese jumprope”. These childhood toys of long ago are only when parents choose to sit and remember them, and all the experiences that were shared in those carefree crazy days. Deeply lodged in our minds, way back in time, there is a toybox filled with wonderful treasures, a street full of kids playing, shouting, and laughing, running and jumping. Along with these things, we will uncover and bring back the stories and cherished memories that accompanied them.

Recently, I told my kids that when I was growing up a few streets over in the early 1970’s, I was seriously not allowed to come into the house on spring and summer evenings until the street lights came on. It was not unusual nor considered cruel to have my mother exclaim that my friends and I were “not allowed inside the house, play outside and enjoy it while you can”. In fact, every body else’s parents shared the same sentiment, and we liked it that way. Why in the world would we want to be inside the stupid old house anyway? It was boring, there was absolutely nothing to do in there, was there? I don’t even think that we gave it a second thought. The evening television was for the benefit of our parents or much older siblings to watch shows like Hawaii Five- O, Colombo, Mannix, Laugh-In, or the evening news with Walter Cronkite…and other “adult TV shows”. No way, unless it was winter, or I was allowed to have a friend sleepover for the “Friday night Line-Up” which included Nanny & The Professor, The Partridge Family, The Brady Bunch, and if you were smart enough to pretend you’d fallen asleep and your parents already had….you could sneak in an episode of the racy program Love American Style which was the last show of Friday night programming. I wonder how that show would be perceived by the kids of today. I think we had better stick with the Gilmore Girls.

Now, let’s have some fun in the sun and get back to the toys and games of our youth. I’d love to hear from readers what you remember a typical play experience being wherever and whenever you were growing up. I think that it will allow us all to go back to those playgrounds in our mind and make us smile and laugh, just recalling simpler times. Of course one can argue that we have the technology of today, and this progress is reality, and it is a positive thing. Not uncommon , four year olds are mastering computer games, everyone knows who the Sims are, and why my daughter can fix any cyber-related situation I encounter while laughing about how much I don’t know about computers. Should I be apologizing for not being a card-carrying member of the Geek Squad? Sorry my sweet little one, but mommy would rather be a member of the Mod Squad……Just call me Julie.

The other day while reminiscing over lunch with a childhood friend, I cracked up laughing and almost spit out my lemon water. He gazed at me like I was crazy, but already knowing that I am, he inquired as to what was so damn funny. For some odd reason, I remembered how when I would play outside as a kid and I would have an ice cream cone, my hands and the cone would become absolutely filfthy, but there was no thought given to throwing away the ice cream cone. I continued to eat it with my little clammy dirty tiny hands as it melted and became even dirtier. Let me say that we were a “nice clean normal family” (okay, this is debatable but that’s another hub).

There was never thought given to going inside, or anyone coming out to clean my hands with Fresh Wipes or taking away the ice cream from me. I managed to recount this epiphany of my childhood to my friend while battling horrible fits of laughter and I saw a look of recognition slowly come across his face. He must have had the “dirty hands ice cream experience” somewhere along the line as well. I jokingly made a comment about how there must not have been 800 numbers for child neglect back in the day.

I’m going to list as many games as I can remember, and as many toys from my childhood as I possibly can. Who knows how many you will remember too, and even better, how many you can add and share with us. I hope that as you think back on these things, it brings a smile to your face, and a light happy feeling to your day. Who knows, maybe it will even inspire you to recall a few stories that you can bore your kids with as you drive to Epcot this summer, and they all forget their ipods back at the house.

Here goes:

Klick-Klacks (2 marble balls on a string)

Chinese Jumprope

Mr. Potato Head

Slinky

Jax

Marbles

Chrissy Dolls (the hair grew)

Dawn dolls (mini barbies)

Frisbees (sometimes still can be spotted at a park but fading fast)

Kites

Kick the can

Relievio ( neighborhood tag, a dungeon was someone’s porch).. and if you were approaching adolescence you may have even played “French relievio”...don’t ask.

Pies (someone was the wolf, the “mother’ named all her children different pies!)

Double Dutch jumprope and all those crazy jumprope songs that went with it!

Dodge Ball (also referred to as kickball)

Parchese

Ant farms

Tops

Etch-A-Sketch

GI Joes

Paper dolls

Susie Bake oven

Barbies, of course, all that went with them…(my older sister Maureen scored big points with me when she got a sewing machine and started sewing clothes for Barbie, Skipper and even Midge)

How about putting your bathing suit on when it was going to rain and running around in the front yard, or running through the sprinklers on your lawn?

Water guns, Water Balloon fights and other such weapons that caused neighborhood wars

Bowling bat (was that what it was called?) it was a little “superball” attached to a wooden bat

Catching lightning bugs in mason jars with the lid having punctured holes cheerfully supplied by someones Mom

Games like jouji Board (which eerily answered any question you had by moving to a letter on the board)

Holding a sceance (I never could understand why we were trying to bring back someone’s crazy aunt who nobody ever talked to in the first place)

Card games such as old maids, fish, war, pinnocle, 52 pick up, and some game where you had your knuckles smacked with the deck of cards until they bled (or did my older sisters just do that for my benefit?) Could it have been called Bloody Knuckles?

Hula Hoops

Hangman

How Many Steps Before the Queen?

Simon Says

You didn’t need a “party planner” to organize games like musical chairs, or pin the tail on the donkey?

Pick Up Sticks

Spin the Bottle

Caps and a cap gun

Hide and Seek

Red Rover, Red Rover

Countless sing-songy hand-slapping, rhythmic chants with body movements orchestrated and repeated all day long!! (Miss Mary Mac anyone?)

Ring Around the Rosy

London Bridge Falling Down

I Spy something (blue?)

Seven minutes in Heaven

Post Office

Highly sought after folded paper flower type things with names of boys, number of children, and other such “futuristic” information that made you and all of the other girls squeal with delight!

Well, as I prepare to go inside and tell my daughter it’s time to turn off the Wii, I leave you with this thought. The next time you hear any one’s kid whining in Walmart about a “must –have” video game, ipod, or techno gadget, or even complaining on a summer night that they are bored, I have a perfect solution for you. Look right into their eyes, with the most serious of all faces ever, and ask them if they would like to play a friendly game of “Bloody Knuckles”” with you. If you’re lucky enough, you may even be able to get it in before Mr. Softee’s Ice Cream truck pulls onto your block and the entire neighborhood starts to yell and scream. I think you’ll have a fun time remembering what comes next. While your at it, would you get me one of those ice-cream cones shaped like a shaggy dog? Oh, and grab the Fresh Wipes off the counter. It’s going to be a long night….we will be lucky if we finish before the street lights come on.