Four-square is alive and kicking in all the playgrounds I've known.
And dodgeball fucking
rocks.
Last sport I was ever good at. See, I could never quite throw with any sort of accuracy; but I could dodge like nobody's business. It was lovely. Oh! The best game variant? Was when you had two teams and when someone got hit they went and joined the other team, instead of going to a jail area. There were a great number of balls being used all at once. The game ended once everybody ended up on the same team. And it was clever, you know, because everybody won-- the people who ended up on the big team felt good because they ended up on the side that picked off everyone, and the last few people left on the small side felt good because they had lasted the longest.
Believe it or not, USians are more than capable of understanding UK English. We don't need it translated.
Wrod.
I mean, I've a couple times in private correspondence (with John) had amusing moments of confusion, but they're usually pronunciation stuff (I don't need any more mix-up! I pronounce things ridiculously strangely as it is!) and you're not speaking aloud....
Did other people play Elastics?
We called it that. We also played British Bulldog in co-ed teams, but only on the playground. I was almost always the smallest kid in class, so they put me between the two biggest kids so I wouldn't be an automatic weak link.
I broke my arm playing four square. Brutal game. Of course, I also slashed my foot all to hell playing basketball. I think maybe I'm playing these games wrong.
I had a long email acquaintance with a colleague who was at that time at UWisconsin. Only after about 3 months did I speak to him on the phone and realize he was British!
Ok. I never played that. Red Rover, yeah. Dodgeball :shudder:, yeah.
Variations on jumprope, yeah. Not four-square, though.
I played foursquare, a variant on Liz's version of dodgball, jumprope, this weird game where one kid swung a jumprope in a circle and we all had to jump over when it came around to us. The neighborhood I lived in 'til I was 5 was pretty free-range-- kids had the run of the street and most of the back yards, but there were a lot of us and it wasn't a big street. When I moved to the suburb I live in now, I was pretty much limited to my back yard and the woods behind it, but there was enough cool stuff there that I didn't mind.
My favorite game: Prisonball. In a gym, you throw head-sized Nerf balls at the opposite side. When you hit someone, they go to prison, which is behind your side, so you're sandwiched between. They get out of prison if they hit you. If you catch the ball someone throws at you or is trying to throw to their prison, they go to prison. It seems more interesting than straight dodgeball, but we never really played that.
Yes! I was just gong to mention that! We played it this way in middle school, and it rocked! The best part was, even if you were out, you weren't really out for good--you could always get back in again. We played it outside, though, with cones marking off the borders.
Four Square was practically the official game of our school--we played it almost religiously. We even had Four-Square courts painted into the concrete on our playgroud. There was always a mad dash at recess to claim the court.
I don't think I've ever played regular tag--we always played freeze-tag. Sometimes with the TV/Movie/Book/Whatever variation. Lots and lots of hide-and-seek, too.
God, we used to play Red Rover at recess in second grade...it was one of my favorite games. So much so that I decided to play it one day the first year I taught. Note to self--elementary games do not always translate well to big strong middle schoolers. They won't let go and they will get hurt.
The "dangerous" game we used to play was called Peg (or, sometimes, Wallball). Rules were simple: throw a tennis ball at the wall. Try to catch it as it bounced back. If you didn't catch it, but the ball touched you, you ran like hell to the wall, because whoever DID get the ball would try to "peg" you (hard!) before you touched the wall. It was eventually banned at school, which was a shame 'cause we had this lovely, windowless, 3-story-high brick wall facing the side yard...
It was eventually banned at school
They always ban the really fun ones.
