Were you the best at Boys Chase Girls? Were you the Tetherball queen? What recess game did you rule at? Or, was there one that you always wanted to try? I always wanted to play soccer. When my friend Tamara would put on her shin guards and pull her hair in a ponytail I would get oh-so-jealous.

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

Answers

Hopscotch was a major deal in my school. Sinc there were only four of them painted on the asphalt of the playground, we would get into really scary little-bitch fights in our determined race to get to a hopscotch first. Losing a "hopscotch save" in grade 2 was the first time I ever called anyone besides my sister a bad name -- it was oh so serious, and my three best girl-friends and I were the bad-assed hopscotch queens that year. I was never bad at it, but my friend Susan always seemed to have better luck, probably because of the token she used -- we all made them out of different materials, but hers was always this huge wad of the really heavy lead-like wrapping from wine bottles. She always had fresh foil, and would experiment with moulding it into the perfect shape, but the trick I think was in the weight, because it never moved after it landed; if she aimed right, it just fell and stayed there. Later I wondered about where she kept getting so much of that wine-bottle foil...

By grade 3, we'd moved on to double-dutch jump-rope (much less lethal than the hopscotch race).

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

Apparently I'm very entertaining to watch when I play volleyball. I'm not particularly an asset to the team, but I had been considered more fearless when it came to diving for the volleyball. I remember one gym teacher's frequently screaming, Stop playing with your face!

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

Handball.

We played with one of those hollow blue rubber balls in a patio area at my school that wasn't especially suited for the game. Too many cracks in the pavement, allowing for all sorts of crazy bounces. Which actually worked to my advantage, as, while I was merely okay at the game, I was a grand master at finding grounds for a "do-over." At game point, I could sometimes stretch things out for seventeen re-serves...

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

Four Square.

Please tell me someone else played this besides me and my classmates at Shades Mountain Christian School. We were rabid about it. I wasn't even a competetitive kid and I remember wanting to smoke those other kids so bad I could taste it.

I don't even remember the rules to four square. I know you mark off a square, then quarter it...and then there's some ball bouncing and...I don't know. Someone else has to remember!

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/2958

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

Kickball, baby. Kickball rocks. I wish I could convince enough people at work to start a kickball team. That would be so cool.

After I got to middle school, I avoided recess because I was afraid I'd become the target in a rousing game of "Murder" "Cavalry" or "Smear the Queer." I don't know what the subtle differences were for each of these games, since the object always seemed to be someone small getting chased and then pounded into a pulp by a large group of boys.

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

When I was in high school we had a project that got its own room. We had the room all to ourselves... we even had the KEY!

Anyway, we would play DEATHBALL. This is where we took one of those extremely bouncy little rubber balls and we would violently throw it across the room in an attempt to ricochet it cleverly off of some object or wall and into another player. Making the ball bounce in really creative ways was often preferable to actually hitting someone with it.

Another this-should-be-in-the-Olympics activity that my friends and I did in junior high was the credit card toss. We didn't have credit cards, but we did have a collection of heavy plastic cards we found or got in the mail or whatever. We would hurl them like little spinning blades and try to achieve the greatest series of acrobatic maneuvers by a flying piece of plastic.

BTW, if you haven't guessed, I am a g

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

eek.......

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

I was the Cootie Queen in 2nd and 3rd grade, until I moved. It was sad. I remember that the big thing at my elementary school was sometihng with two big long poles of bamboo. The setup of that game was two poles, two kids to hold the poles, and two brick-things to bang the poles on. (DO you have ANY idea how many times so far I've spelled POLES as POLSE? Friday for sure...). The kids would grab the bamboo POLES (hah!) and kneel on the ground, and they'd CLACK the ends of the poles on the bricks in some kind of fairly catchy rythem. I think the game was similar to Chinese Jumprope, in that you jumped in, you jumped out, you spun, whatever. It made it harder though cause the poles would move in and out. CLACK - poles wide CLACK - poles narrow CLACK - poles wide again. And you'd have to jump around without getting your ankles knocked. That hurts like hell, by the way. You ever get your ankles smacked by FAT bamboo poles? Smacking your hand instead of the pole on the brick was pretty painful too.

Oh, and I have played Foursquare too. I think you bounce the ball from one square to the other in some pattern? I don't remember the game, just playing it.

You know, I've long thought that some company should start making BIG PEOPLE TOYS!!! Huh? You guys agree with me here? Think about it - big people Big Wheels! You remember how damn neat it was to pull that lever up and sliiiiiiide to a stop? You remember picking up your seat back and putting it in the farthest holes so you could ride double? What about the Sit N' Skate? You sat on a big seat with wheels, and put your feet on handlebars and wiggled them back and forth to move. I so want a big-girl dress up set that DOESN'T come from Fredricks (somehow a crotchless ballerina outfit doesn't quite do it for me). Work with me here people, wouldn't you want grown up toys too?

MellieBee aka Cootie Queen

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

Ahh, Big Wheels. Except for motorcycles, those are my favorite wheeled vehicles. My neighborhood had a lot of kids my age, and most of us had Big Wheels. We even had Big Wheel-mounted turf wars. The kids with Big Wheels would ride them and let the other kids ride on back. The 'gunners' would throw rocks at the other group of wheelers, while the riders would would charge at each other and try to avoid getting pelted. It wasn't as "Lord of the Flies" as it sounds. I think we quit when I started riding by myself and using a plastic pipe to whip rocks at the slower Big Wheel chariots, and would also try to ram the others. Conflict escalation was always a problem with me.

Other than that I had a lot of fun with hide-and-seek and dodgeball. I had more fun and got more exercise in recess than I ever did in the forced sport of PE class.

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

Four Square? I remember Four Square!

If it hit your square, and you didn't catch it or knock it into an opponants square you were out, and the queue to play moved up one. I don't remember if you could hit the ball diagonally or not, but I don't think you could. Sort of like ping pong, but you played with a big bouncy ball (not a basketball), you played off of the ground, no net, and it was played with a player occupying 1 of 4 courts.

Hardest was when someone bounced the ball so that it hit your corner, and it landed in another square before you could touch it. Then you were out.

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

I pestered my parents until I got the king of Big Wheels--The Big Green Machine. I loved that thing. It was a kind of four wheel Big Wheel. Awesome.

Dodge-ball was also a favorite. We convinced the P.E. teacher to let us have a week long dodge-ball tournament while the girls were having health classes or something. We made a pact with each other that no matter how hard someone hit you with that rubber ball you wouldn't complain to the teacher because he would have ended it right there. We drew some serious blood that week. I always got stuck on the team of nerds and wusses because they were my friends. So I had a fun filled week of revenge against the jocks who would slam my skinny friends to tears. As they were launching their attack I would loose my ammo at their head. As their smile would appear in anticipation of nerd annhilation my ball would leave an imprint on the side of their face. We got really good at the old bait&slam.

I ruined more clothes playing smear the queer. Sorry Mom.

Tetherball was always fun for us tall people

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

Foursquare was a lethal game in my grade school. Just in case you wanted to know..=].. the rules would be each square was a different level. King was the highest, and she would be the one to serve the ball. When she got out, instead of being scrapped from the game entirely, she'd be moved to the lowest level, Poor, or Loser as I liked to call it. Then there was Queen, which was next to King. You didn't do anything in Queen, except be next to rule the foursquare court if you didn't get slaughtered. Then there was the Rich square, or the Bastard square as I preffer to name it. The King Square serves to them. Then, of course, the Poor/Loser square. This is where King went when she hit 'out', and where the next reserve went.

Anyway, we made up all of these real complicated rules, like if the ball hit the line you were out. Sometimes a person needed to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, and they'd usually claim 'Poison Square!', so if you hit the ball there, you were out. Letting the ball bounce twice in your square meant you were out. Being a real ass meant you were out sometimes. Then there were the ways to hit the ball.. hoo-boy. There were the High Rockets, where you hit the ball so damn hard it would fly 12 feet in the air before landing again. This was a pretty stupid method, as the ball would usually land in the wrong place, that and it wasn't that hard to hit anyway.

Littlies were when you let the ball *just* make it over the line. They were impossible to hit back. I was the littlies Queen =).

Skinners were usually made by people who were starting to get fed up with the game, or were sick of always getting out. This was when you hit the ball so freakin hard, but not like high rockets, so the ball would skim across the ground, that you may as well just get out of the damn thing's way and not worry about playing anymore.

Chinese Jumpropes was a big deal, too. Especially the England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales dance. I don't even know why we bothered moving the elastics up to 'necks'.

But the most fun game of them all was 'Stationary'. This was a game where people got in a line, and one person stood against the wall. They'd then give the line a subject/theme, like 'flowers', 'cars', or 'movies'. The line would discuss between themselves, assigning each other things like rose, daffodil, violet, tulip etc. When they were done, the person by the wall would yell out a flower of their own choice. If it was the same as someone in the line, they both had to run from one side of the wall to the other, and once you got back to your spot, yelled 'Stationary!' (I have no idea what relevance that had in this game). The person who says it last becomes the person by the wall. Etc. It seems a little stupid, but it's extremely addictive.

Ok.. am I boring you yet? Happy birthday Squishy :)

Love,

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

oooo - i had an instant flashback of my grade 5 school yard --> chinese jumprope ruled! i don't think we called it that though... i don't remember what we called it. also - we played those games with those little balls - you know, bounce them against the wall and do silly little tricks while singing "oRANge Crrrrusssshhh, PEPsi COLLAaaaaa" and i don't remember the rest. but the most popular, by far, had to be murder ball with 4 (count'em FOUR) balls. there'd be two rectangles, and we'd divide up into teams, and each team would get two of those red rubber gym balls, and we'd have to hit eachother with them. and wow - kids can be really mean and those gym balls are just really painful - as was the concrete if you tripped or something. the funniest thing though, was always how much i loooved baseball. couldn't hit, run, catch, throw but man, i loved to play baseball. then, one day, my friend tina was batting, and for some reason, i was standing reaally close. to this day, i don't know why - i had a good reason, and the teacher didn't think it was weird... but when tina swung the bat, it cracked me right in the head. i actually saw spots! man, was that embarrassing. yeah, now i stay behind the fence.

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1999

The guys at my school were violent.

When school started out, we played tag (didn't everyone?) That wasn't bad, and I only got a couple of scars, and they're all gone though. Within a couple of years however, we graduated to a game of chicken. In our variation each guy would have another on top their shoulders and would attempt to knock the competition over. I got the biggest bump on my skull I've ever had in a particularly bad loss one day on the blacktop.

That was just lower elementary. In upper elementary we had three seasons. Fall was tackle football. This was against the rules of course. So whenever a supervisor or teacher would come within observation range, someone would give a secret signal and the game would instantly become touch football. We never got in trouble, even when one boy displaced his knee and was hurt for quite a while.

Winter was a massive game of king of the hill. One side of the playground bordered a parking lot, and each year the plow would make a massive hill, as tall as we were. Then one grade's boys would take the hill, and the other two grades would form a line, and charge in an attempt to dislodge them. Probably the most violent playground game I've ever seen, especially when much of the hill turned to ice.

Spring was much more gentle. Full contact basketball, more football, and forts kept us busy.

I never should have lived through elementary.

-- Anonymous, June 12, 1999

Tetherball Queen, for sure. Also four-square and Chinese jumprope champ. And I was a genius at jacks. Still am, I think, but don't have any in the apartment - I must get some! Thanks for the reminder.

Judy http://www.judywatt.com

-- Anonymous, June 12, 1999

I don't remember too many organized games from gradeschool. In kindergarden we did have a version of girls-chase-boys. There was this big wooden thing that not only had a slide, a pole, and a rope net hanging off of it, but also housed various modes of transportation (only babies used the tricycles, big kids opted for big-wheels and the little tractors with pedals). All of the boys would meet inside at the beginning of recess and discuss our strategies to avoid being kissed, which primarily consisted of "Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn" (bonus points for anyone who guesses what kick-ass 80's movie that comes from). Somehow my friend Todd was the the leader and I was 2nd in command of the boys, meaning we got first pick of vehicles and would give the order to ride out and throw open the doors of our makeshift Batcave. I'm glad I stopped trying so hard to get away. Other than that, I mostly remember games my brother and I invented. We lived in the country, didn't have cable, and had relatively few kids nearby so we had to come up with our own forms of entertainment. In the pool we had Houdini, Pearl Harbor, Rad (named after the BMX movie); on the trampoline there was Asteroids, Superman, and the ever-popular Crack the Egg; with the go carts we had Cops and Robbers, Indy 500, and grass surfing; just plain old regular games included Doc Savage, WrestleMania, the Incredible Hulk (which actually my cousin came up with and we never really found out how to play since his demonstration of the rules of the game consisted of holding his breath, turning bright red, grunting a little and pissing his pants), and my brother's favorite- Hey-Andy, Tell-Me-How-Bad-This-Hurts. With our weekend shows in Dallas for the past 4 weeks and the next 2, the Monks have had plenty of time to come up with car games. We've turned 20 Questions into an art form. We also have one of those ring toss games with little plastic hoops floating in a tiny plastic container filled with water. You try to get all of the hoops on two poles by pressing a little pump button, without letting them fall off into a side reservoir. I've developed a system and have the record with getting all of the rings on the poles in a minute and a half. I'm also the reigning champion of Marco Polo at the motel pool, and I have the scrapes on my shoulders to prove it. God my life is sad.

p.s.-- Sorry for not responding to your proposal, Allison. I don't read the postings in the forum every day, so I missed it. I myself have several pending proposals from girls who just didn't want to date me at the time but said that if wey were single at 50 we should get married. Spiffy, however, is as eligible a bachelor as they come, though I hear he's looking to settle down.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 1999

Foursquare. I remember that. although we didn't have some kind of CLASS ANALYSIS (king-queen-rich-peon or whatever) mentioned in an earlier post. maybe that was cuz it was a quaker school run by ex- hippies. we just had Onesquare through Foursquare, and Onesquare got to make up the rules. I occasionally played that, or chinese(?) jumprope. But I really spent a lot of time pounding small pieces of quartz into powder and combining the powders. I have no idea why I found it fascinating.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 1999

Kickball rocked in my neighborhood. I remember the big kids trying to knock the small kids over with the ball. That was a lot of fun!

-- Anonymous, June 14, 1999

i can say that the kids on my playground played every one of those games listed...we'd go in phases. but the one that i always thought was the best was one we made up, called cow-train, or something like that. our pebble covered playground area was surrounded by a little wall divider, about 6 or so inches high made from long 2x4's of wood , presumably to keep the pebbles from taking over the soccer field. the point of this game was to take out the other "cow-train" a cow-train was a bunch of people holding on to eachother's waists or shoulders, in a conga line fashion, shuffling along this little divider. now, if i remember the correctly, we said "moo" as we shuffled, and that's why it was called a cow-train. now, the excitement came in that there were two, three or more cow-trains going in all sorts of directions on this wall lining the playground, and you either tried to knock the others off, or pass each other on this little 2 x 4 without falling into the grass or pebbles. i think that was about it to the game...i played more games with the neighboorhood kids, like combat war and one we called "oinky-stinky" about a pig. we made up our games all the time... we were creative, with a little too much time on our hands.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 1999

In case anyone was wondering - believe it or not, we did that bamboo thing at my elementary school too!

It's actually a form of dance from the Philippines called "tinikling".

I wondered about it for years & then finally one day looked it up on the net and found pix.

It was tons of fun... although being little kids we didn't get anywhere near as complicated as they did in the pix I found on the net...

regards Jenn

-- Anonymous, June 14, 1999

I just have to add that Chinese Jumprope was known as 'Elastics' here in Tasmania. Such a thought provoking name isn't it?

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999

We called it Elastics as well.

Did anyone other that Kiwi kids play Bullrush? All the kids would line up along one side of the field, and one kid would be in, and would call people into the middle of the field. If you were called you had to try and leg it to the other side of the field without being tagged by whoever was in. If you got tagged, you were also in. Wussy kids played Bullrush like tag, but the kids at my (nice, convent) school played it as a tackle sport. When whoever was in yelled 'bullrush'! all the kids would try and make it to the other side of the field, everyone would be tackling everyone else, and out and out carnage would ensue. It was such a cool game until the nuns banned it.

We also played Four Square, and Knucklebones (what you guys call Jacks). I don't remember many other games because I spent most of my formative years pretending I was a pony, so I was far to busy galloping around.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999

Chinese jumprope was called "Elastique" in France, too. I was pretty good at it. Somehow, I could get my leg up over it when people were holding it at arm's length above their heads. I could never do that now. Gimp (er... Rexlace?) was in. My mum taught me how before we moved so I was the first at my new school to have it. I taught everyone, which gained me a few days of popularity.

In grade four, our playground was on the roof of the school, a block of concrete five floors up. The grade six kids played a game where one held the other by the arms and spun them around and around so they would go way up in the air. It was terrifying!

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999

It's all rushing back to me now ...

We had a different song for Elastics. It went...

'England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Inside, Outside, Monkey's tails!'

I can't even begin to describe how it was played, but if any of you are even in London look me up and I'll meet you on Putney Common for a quick round.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999

I had forgotten all about tinikiling (or however you spell it.)

I remember you'd bounce it on the ground twice and then you'd slap the sticks together twice.

I think we did it to learn how to do double dutch (which, once you master you feel like the queen of the blacktop.)

I remember how I would watch the other kids play "Boys Chase Girls," which I always thought was a really stupid game. Not like "Kick the Can," which ROCKED. There's nothing better than shouting "Ollie Ollie Oxen Free!" and running full speed into the big oak tree that was known by all as "base."

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999

I think our game 'Go Home, Stay Home' (such a classic title!) was Olly Olly Oxen Free. Everybody hid except whoever was in, the person who was in tried to find people and send them home to be captive, people who hadn't been found yet could free people who were captured, and if you made it home before you were found or tagged you rocked anyway.

It seemed much more fun before I tried describing it.

Actually, the best fun was when I stopped pretending to be a pony and actually got one. My little Pony Club friends and I were like the Thelwell pony riders - we'd hurtle around all over the place. A particular favourite was playing tag at breakneck speed, and going swimming in the river with the ponies - we'd make them slither down the banks and launch themselves into the water, and if your pony didn't like water you just weren't one of the cool Pony Club kids.

I can't wait to move back to NZ one day so I can have my own horse again and teach my kids these hi-jinks.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999

I was great at Dodgeball, because I was so petrified of getting nailed with the ball. I'd almost always be one of the last three people left, because I cared so much more than anyone else. These skills will certainly come in handy if I'm ever subjected to mortar fire.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999

We played Bullrush too. But called it British Bulldog. It got so violent at my school that the principal called a special assembly to warn about the dangers of the game, and to ban it for that very reason.

Of course we still played it.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 1999

That reminds me of Red Rover. Such fun. Some fool on the other line would always decide that they could keep Lee from breaking through their puny line of clasped hands. 'Red Rover red rover send LEE right over' Total--line--carnage; and shoulder socket strains galore.

-- Anonymous, June 16, 1999

I was one of the few boys in my school that played Chinese jumprope. But I loved it. It was challenging and fairly complex. What was that one way of playing where you stretch one side of the jumprope far to one side with one of your legs and then swing back toward the center, catching the other side of the jumprope on the way and head all the way out to the other side?

-- Anonymous, June 24, 1999

David, are you talking about the "scissors" part of Chinese Jumprope? What you're describing almost sounds like Cat's Cradle!

(there's a girlie test for you, there)

-- Anonymous, June 24, 1999

Okay, fine, you caught me -- I played ALL the girlie games. Hopscotch, jumprope, jacks, tether ball,... I've just always enjoyed being around the girls more than the boys.

I never understood that whole thing about little boys hating little girls. I was never like that. I think I first kissed a girl when I was eight. We planned it for after school and somehow everyone found out about it and turned up for the big event. We crawled into one of those giant cement cylinders on the playground and kissed where no one could see us.

-- Anonymous, June 24, 1999

Does anyone remember the little jump rope rhyme thingy that went:

"Down in the valley where the green grass grows
There sat (insert girl's name here), as sweet as a rose
She sang, she sang, she sang so sweet
And along came (insert boy's name here) and kissed her on the cheek! How many kisses did she get that week?"

And then you'd count to see just how many kisses you got from the guy they decided on. However, the girls at my particular elementary school had a known mean streak, and were prone to announcing the boy's name that no one liked. I would get so mad, I'd stop the entire thing and tell them to start over with someone else's name. Then if they did say my crush's name, my face would get all red and I'd scream, "I DON'T LIKE HIM!" which usually brought the teacher over to see what exactly I was carrying on about.

I'm very surprised I developed a sense of humor.

We played a lot of "Girls Chase Boys" in first grade. I became excellent at taking down guys. However, due to my small stature, there was only one I could tackle -- David. David was the love of my life. Cute little blonde with blue eyes. Couldn't pwonounce his r's and l's. He was adorable.

He hated my guts.

I did finally catch him one day. My friend Danielle and I tag-teamed him and got ahold of his jacket. He ran right out of it and toward the safety of the swings. Danielle and I didn't care. We dared each other to kiss the coat, which again, brought the teacher over to see what was going on.

I'm glad I'm not quite so aggressive now.

-- Anonymous, June 25, 1999

Another fun game I just remembered was one where my friend Chad and I would swipe the garage door remote thingie from his parent's desk. We'd close it, and one of us would stand outside and press the button to make it open. The other one would wait inside, and grab on as it was going up. Even better is when his brother Brad got old enough to press the button so that Chad and I could hang on together and have contests to see who would let go first.

One day, Brad had enough of button-pushing and wanted to try hanging. So I took over the controls and let Brad and Chad hang on. Combining weight of them was probably well over a hundred, and the garage door got about halfway up before it started emitting sparks from the control box. The garage door jumped up and down a few times, and finally came to rest in a crooked fashion three-fourths of the way from the ground.

The babysitter, Grethel (her real name), came outside to investigate. Brad and Chad got a good-and-proper spanking, and I got a grape popsicle. Grethel always favored girls.

-- Anonymous, June 25, 1999

I was the soopa-doopa DOPEST at Couch Balloon Tennis!!! I used to kick Chuy's punk-ass around the living room something fierce! Sheee-it, I could topspin, underspin, sidespin, and (oh you didn't know?) GYROspin that balloon! Lil tyke didn't stand a chance. Still don't. IF YA SMEEEELLL...... WHAT CHITO..... IS COOKIN' !!!

-- Anonymous, July 27, 1999

But no one could chaka-sa-nooya like my uncle Roland, not even the Great Kabuki.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 1999