And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~ Kahlil Gibran



Saturday, July 05, 2008

Games I Have Played

Well, Mom and I got into the best giggle~fit tonight over all the things I used to do as a kid that folks would think were a little "ghetto". Here is a partial list:

~sharpen sticks on the cement steps and have imaginary "mammoth hunts" or play "Indian Wars" (I suppose that should be "Native American Conflict", huh?)

~bang rocks together to make dust. I think originally we had planned on making arrowheads or bowls or something, but after a few hours you were just banging to bang

~sitting in fairy rings and singing in hopes that the fairies would take me to their world

~Stick Soup and Mud Pies

~climbing up into trees to take a nap and pretend I was a jaguar

~trying to make leaf and bark bowls (for serving the Stick Soup and Mud Pies, of course)

~drinking out of the hose

~having rhubarb straight from the ground as a snack

~using fallen branches etc to make shelters in the woods

~giving guided tours of the patch of woods behind the house

~raiding the edges of the cornfield for ears of feed corn that we would then shuck and use the kernels to "grind us up some corn meal" This went along with the shelters and the rock bowls

~digging holes....for no particular reason

~hiding in the lilac bushes and spying on the squirrels and birds

~snow forts, tunnels, and snowball fights

~snow sharks....these were very dangerous creatures that could attack a full grown man if he didn't stay to the shoveled paths

~fishing for ice fish

~making gigantic nests in the tall grass

~piling up rocks....no particular reason

~of course, the home made slip n slide

~climbing fire hydrants and jumping off (this was prohibited after Bro almost cut his nose off)

~build things with scraps of wood from my Dad's scrap stash

~filling my shoes with nightcrawlers (I figured if I had bait, Dad would take me fishing)


* * * * * * * * *

As you can see, my life was awful as a child. Of course, I did do some normal things like ride my bike and play with Barbies. But they were nowhere near as fun as a good rock-banging session. ;)

4 comments:

Lisa said...

Sounds like a pretty normal childhood, if you ask me! i did some of that stuff too! We used to find "chalk rock" in the dirt and write on the fences and played Cowboys and Native Americans with the boy across the street, only we threw mud balls as bombs until mom started making us scrub out our clothes!

Ah, good times!

jenny said...

I had pretty much the same kind of childhood as you. I have to add, that we lived near railroad tracks and me and my best friend would ride our trikes (as in tricycles!) back and forth across the tracks while the train was coming just to hear the engineer blow the train whistle! If only my parents knew!! I'd probably still be grounded if they knew!

RuthieJ said...

This post was so funny--we did all these fun things along with the 5 neighbor kids who lived across the street. I was gonna say writing messages on the sidewalk with "chalk rock" too, but Lisa beat me to that one. And we had a railroad track nearby like Jenny too--only we put pop cans and pennies on the track to see what the train did after it rolled over them. I'm always amazed we grew into adulthood with all body parts still intact, aren't you?

barefoot gardener said...

Chalk Rock! I forgot all about that...

And we lived by the tracks, too. We used to go collect taconite pellets for the neighbor boys' slingshots (and just to throw at each other).

Ah, memories!