Sharing Memories Week 6: Games You Played

To encourage all genealogists (and myself!) to write our stories, Sharing Memories is a series of weekly prompts to help with writing up memories of our ancestors and our childhood. 

We all love to find a diary or letters written by great grandma or grandpa where they talk about their lives and share their memories. Think how excited one of your descendants will be to read about your memories and your stories! These stories will be lost unless we preserve them. And what better way than in a weekly themed post. 

Just think - at the end of the year you will have 52 stories written about your childhood, your parents, grandparents and who knows what else.

If you write your own blog please use the hashtag #52SharingMemories if you are posting on Twitter or Google+  You can also  post your stories as comments on this blog post or in a private journal. It's your choice! The important thing is to write those memories down now!

Week 6's prompt is to write about games you played as a kid. You could also talk about games your mom or dad played or your grandparents. Talk about the games, tell us the rules and who you played with. Was it fun? Were you good at a certain game? 

I didn't play many games as a kid, mainly because my sister and I were not allowed out after supper. So after 6 pm when other kids were outside having fun, we used to sit in the living room watching them. Even at age 10 and 11 I was still sitting, nose pressed to the glass, wishing I was out there too.

When I played on my own during the day, I mostly bounced my ball. I still remember bouncing my ball in time as I chanted "Bouncy bouncy ball-ee, I broke my sister's dolly, She gave me a whack, (I forget the next line -it  might have been "she broke my back"), bouncy bouncy ball-ee" 

I also bounced my ball to the chant of "1-2-3 oh larry, my name is Mary,  if you think it necessary, look it up in the dictionary" Of course you didn't just bounce your ball up and down, you did tricks  like swing your leg over it and continue bouncing, or spin around and keep bouncing. I loved this!

I do remember playing "Cops and Robbers" with the boy next door and a couple of his friends. That must have been during the day on a Saturday. But I got hurt the day he handcuffed us together, we climbed up on the porch roof to get away from the "cops" and he jumped off. I wasn't ready to jump and fell rather awkwardly. I sprained my wrist very badly and wouldn't play after that! 

Believe it or not I also loved my Slinky and would send it down our stairs (inside) for hours on end. Do you notice a theme here? I only played solitary games. Oh yeah I forgot, I also had a yo-yo which I played with some of the time. I didn't have a skipping rope and never learned how to skip. 

One time I did get to go outside with the other kids. It was the only weekend we ever had without my mother there. She and my dad had a big fight and she went away for the entire weekend. So dad let me go outside and play. I was so excited! The neighbourhood kids were very welcoming but I soon found out that since I didn't know how the games were played, I wasn't having much fun. 

One of the games was something to do with another kid tracing a circle on your back while chanting something along the lines of " ...... who pokes IN" With the words "who pokes IN!" you got a poke in your back. I don't remember what you were supposed to do once poked - chase the other kids? Look for them as they hid? 

They also invited me to play "Kick the Can" but I stood on the sidelines trying to figure out the rules! It was an odd moment - the event I'd been longing for (playing with other kids) wasn't as much fun as I thought. Of course I never got to play outside again. So I never learned group games. I think that affected me adversely because I still don't work well in groups and far prefer to be on my own!