( continues...) passion, DODGE BALL ( also known as Bullies From Hell )
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And mine...
For me, there's a big difference between the games I played and the games I enjoyed. When we lived in Vermont, and ours was the largest open and most centrally located lawn in the neighborhood, we'd play all kinds of things in the summer. I liked red rover, duck-duck goose. At our next door neighbor's house, which one could easily run all the way around, we played a game called The Bears Are Out tonight. I particularly liked this game. The person who was "it" was the bear and we would all run around the house. When one of us was tagged, we would become a bear. Home/safety was the jungle gym. And a team of people could form a human chain of safety to save a trapped player from being tagged. I also loved playing poison floor in the room I shared with my sister. The idea was you had to get around the room without touching the floor. If you touched the "poison floor" you were out/dead. That same neighbor's mother used to send her kids out to the yard to stare away the clouds if it looked like it would rain. I don't know if she really thought this would work; but I am sure she got all of the little ones out from underfoot while she cooked.
In our first house in Maryland, I played a lot of pool. We had a small, kid-sized pool table, purchased as the Christmas game (we'd get a different game every year). I spent a lot of time at the pool table and got to be quite good. At one point, I think I could beat everyone in my family. Later in life, my Godfather and I would play. He'd coach me about pool and life and I'd get out some good competitive energy and tell him about whatever guy I was infatuated with. He eventually gave me an instructive book about billiards and I would take it to the pool hall and set up combination shots, etc. I got quite good.
I still love to play pool, but was distressed Friday night when I did quite badly. Though my partner and I did finally win one, it wasn't without some charity on the part of our opponents.
cats v. baseball civil war
I like both. I'm Maryland!
I like both. I'm Maryland!
Yeah, what kind of games did Maryland play growing up?
Hey David, thanks for the heads up on that Chron story. I had not yet seen it.
Don't know if this counts as game, but rarely did a week go by where our fridge didn't have Han Solo serving time in it.
but rarely did a week go by where our fridge didn't have Han Solo serving time in it.
So you prefer your heroes immobolized in carbonite, eh?
::takes all kinds of notes::
Yeah, sure. Keeps them from running away until I finish.
God, I'd have to go to so many meetings if I said that anywhere but here...you have no idea.
Games I played:
Outdoor: hotbox (I almost forgot about that one!), bingo (basketball freethrow game--word would change depending on who you played with), Red Rover (school recess--needed a lot of kids to play), Red Light/Green Light, hide n seek, mud pies, hand-slapping with sister/best friend (Miss Mary Mack-Mack-Mack, all dressed in black-black-black), jump rope (got eight stitches and a decent scar), Pogo Stick, and riding my bike to the neighborhood playground three blocks away (and getting called back for supper by my dad's distinctive whistle, which had about a mile radius--who needs a cell phone?).
Indoors: Solitaire, double solitaire, gin and rummy 500, cribbage, and canasta (with the grandparents only); Tripoly, Life, Sorry!, Monopoly, Battleship, Yahtzee, Uno, Pit (stock trading game), and Operation. We also played with my brother's cool railroad set and pulled out the Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys, as well as his old beat up Tonka trucks.
Best ever, though, was when we got together with my godfather's family every month or so. The hosting family's kids would organize a "haunted house tour," which was basically a gross-out-with-spaghetti-and-peeled-grapes-for-body-parts combined with a painful-crawl-across-upside-down-plastic-mats (those nubby spikes hurt!) in various permutations. Also, when we got together with my uncle's family a few times a year, we would usually do a play/rendition from a kids book (I remember my older cousin Tim improvising with the then-famous line "The devil made me do it!" when we did Billy Goats Gruff).
From way the hell back:
In Kalamazoo?
Shrift, where you last night???
On Friday, I was at home watching Homicide DVDs and not indulging in mischief of any kind. Had I known Pat Buchanan was going to be in town, I gladly would have gone on campus and assaulted him with a variety of condiments. I would never waste perfectly good pie on a hypocritical jackass.
