games you played as kids

There were so very many. Tag, hide-n-seek, red rover, marbles, jacks, endless card games. We also used to do this thing with string whereby we'd make different shapes by intertwining our fingers in the string. (That probably makes no sense at all.) Also a pair of girls would do these clapping games. You'd clap your hands and the other girls together all while reciting a rhyme like Miss Lucy or something. (Another one that probably makes no sense.) Argh, I give up.

That was what I meant by Cats Cradle Lisa....its funny, I took my 11 year old daughter to visit friends in Prague earlier this year, and she and another girl were playing cats cradle for hours, so it seems that it spans different countries too. Another game that kids over there played, was to draw a meandering river type design on a piece of paper, and then push, or "flick" a blunt pencil along the trail. Where the pencil stopped marking the paper was the start point for the next "flick" A bit difficult to describe, but the first person to the end of the river was the winner. I'd never seen this before, and now my kids play it a lot. Anyone else know of this game, or what it is called?

I just went to the local Italian restaurant with 4 colleagues....I was talking about this thread, as there was a guy with red hair in the kitchen (not very Italian methinks, but ho hum) Chris, one of my colleagues said "OOH!! Do you remember playing Ba Da Ba Da" We looked confused until he made opening and closing gestures with his fingers, saying "ba da ba da" - we all said Yesssss we remember!!, and plucked the napkins from the spare wine glasses on the table. (bear with me, i've had a bottle of merlot ) Its that game, where you take a square of paper, fold it into 4, turn it over and fold it into four again, and then write "1, 2, 3, 4" on the outide, and then red, green, yellow etc on the inner faces of paper, and then a dare, or a statement on the inside. Then you put it over your fingers, opening and closing them whilst another person chooses a number, then a colour etc. The you have the great pleasure of calling out "you smell like poo!" when the inner "fortune" that they chose is revealed. I dont think we'll ever be taken seriously again. Two res.managers, a day service manager, a behavioural psychologist and an education services provider all shrieking with laughter and singing "ba da ba da"with napkins over our fingers. Not to mention the one of us that got the dare to blow a kiss at the waiter....... Ahem. I'll go to bed.....

Spin the bottle?

truth or dare?

I'm not sure about 40/40 or top trumps but I happen to know that all the other playground games you mention martin are still very much being played - surprisingly.

We played British Bulldog quite a bit in the states (six-seven years ago.) I haven't heard of any of the other ones. We always played tag, dodge ball (now ban from some playgrounds!), Cops and Robbers (popular with the neighborhood kids), and my personal favorite: television tag. We played Red Rover quite a bit as well. We also played a game called "Steal the Bacon" where each individual in two equal groups was assigned a number to correspond with someone on the other side. A mediator would randomly call one of these numbers and the two people assigned that number would try to take some object in the middle of the floor (supposedly the bacon in the title.) So whoever gets the bacon and runs it to their side, that team gets a point. But if one person picks up the bacon and the other tags him, then the tagger gets a point. I hated that game the most. (They forced me to play that game in Boy Scouts after almost every meeting until I flat out refused to play it! And I was 16!)

"You show me yours and I'll show you mine," which was a lot better than getting debagged in the playground.

Knives, forks, spoons, cut it! This was really a girls game and involved handstands. I think we had to pick a type of handstand like 'drainpipe' which was one leg straight up one bent at the knee (god knows why!) and all do it. In fact what did knives and forks have to do with it. Hmmm, beginning to think I had a weird childhood.

Touchstone 1-2-3. Basically one person was on and guarded his 'home'. Everyone else tried to get to his home, kick it and shout touchstone 1-2-3 without being caught by the 'guard'. I loved it! (Still do).

Ooh yes Martin...top trumps.....marvellous. I had the motorbike version....and board games? Chartbusters (also spotted in retro shop for gazillions of £'s recently) whatchamacallit, kerplunk, baffle ball..... My dad knckered my kerplunk by sticking a piece of foam in the bottom..the git.

Postman's Knock?

We used to plat 'kiss chase' in the local cemetary (no wonder I turned out as I did!). Unfortunately, I was such a hideously ugly sprog (Oh, how times have changed!) that all the boys used to leg it at top speed as soon as they saw me bearing down on them... Consequently, I ended up playing patience alone (as one does) in a remote corner of the playground. *sits back and waits for sympathetic noises*

ooh they're all coming back now.....super striker where you pressed the heads of the players to make them kick the ball.... that early electronic game..."simple simon ?..it was a round thing, with 4 different colours, it played a tune which lit each colour and you had to play the same tune which got progressively longer... connect 4 (which is still going I know) twister, swing-ball, ball attached to elastic, you hit it and the other kid hit it... ..... *was excellent at all of them and would have won medals at any swing ball championship*

I used to 'plat' my hair andrea. chortle

I'm truly fascinated. Was it fun? Not as much fun as frolicking around the gravestones though, I bet...

No-one's mentioned jacks yet - or marbles. Surely someone remembers those wonderful big fobbers (or dobbers in some parts of the country)? It was also quite normal to scramble round behind goods wagons at the local shunting yard, trying to see if you could get a penny flattened on the rails. Blimey, it's a wonder any of us grew up mainly in one piece, when I think about the stupid risks kids took then. No wonder I was in and out of casualty like a yo-yo.

Yep, jacks an' marbles, I remember them. And those stupid wooden peg things with 4 pins on the top (this was a girly thing) around which you wound (for some obscure reason which I've since forgotton) coloured wool and it came out the other end as a er...'plat'. Don't ask me how, I've forgotton that, too. And hoola hoops...and pogo sticks...

football

Never have i ever?.......twenty one?......variations on the same game truth or dare. Tic-tac-toe?...conkers what a classic of course it was easy to cheat at that one if you were sad enough and lonely enough to cheat just for the admiration of your peers. Of course i never cheated...simon says? whats the time mister wolf? All pile on?

I agree Marbles was a fine game...plenty of playground scraps over who had the nicest balls(?) Who remembers that awful game "Raps" when losing a card game(I think it was Ace or something) you had to endure a deck of cards that were angled just so and then have your knuckles rapped to bleeding point....I was the girl who could tolerate the most hits in any one sitting....(God, I someone else played this game, or I'm gonaa look a freak!) My mum used to go mad.

We play 'backward, forwards, left or right'. A bunch of big kids stand around a little kid. One of the big kids wollops the defenceless little kid with a cricket bat. The big kid who guessed which way the little kid would fall wins the prize - next go with the cricket bat. There's a grown up version of this, too. It's called 'Operation Infinite Justice', or summat.

All in all a very enttertaining game, then...

...entertaining, even...

Kiss the postman,...... Literally Also caled `Make Him Worry and Blush!` 1973-74 Only boys allowed to play.

i am rather interested in the games we play today ... "i am nice, emotionally available, sober and sexually functional" seems to be a popular one ...

i still play Chip Shop Words, where you are challenged to use a particular word while buying your fish dinner. [i was mighty impressed a couple of months ago, when someone managed “ammonite”.] not as much fun as british bulldog was though

...with no emotional baggage...

That sounds like a great game though, Robert. I should tell that one to my friends (they'll love it!)

will remind robert about his post soon... ... toys with the word 'testicle' ...

Is that also known as wishful thinking?

I remember Top Trumps and had the airplane version which had all who played giggling about being able to say Fokker freely in the playground.......we were in junior school. Also played scissors, paper, stone. I remember also a piece of string with a small plastic handle that divided two hard plastic balls that you had to click together rapidly swinging them to hit at the top and at the botttom. I can't remember what it was called but I remember them being withdrawn after much bruising to numerous kids and some of the plastic balls actually breaking whilst the game was being played.

They were called K-nockers round here. Cats cradle too, and long lenths of elastic that two people would have stretched round their legs, and another person would hop in and out..that was called "elastics" originally..

on both parts probably MYB ...

I think we called them clackers....

I remember a game we used to play called `knock down ginger`. Anyone who was ginger we used to knock them down. Unless they were bigger than us then we didn't.

Chutty Pucking. Which was just our gangs childlike (should that be childish) name for Putty Chucking. Self-explanatory really but it involved finding a suitably unattended building site, stealing the putty, rolling it into marble-sized little balls then hurling them at passing pedestrians, cyclists, cars etc from the cover of roadside bushes. OK, OK I know - but we were only nine at the time. Anyway, I can only recall one actual fatality. Collateral damage we called it, so it was OK. I can still hear the putty balls pinging off the cars to this day. Of such things are dreams made. Arson. you know the one where you stole matches from your folks then went out and set fire to the fields. Then came in and blamed the Hutchinson gang from the next estate. Err, I hesitate to mention this but did anyone else ever go stealing birds eggs, put a pin-prick in either end then blow out the contents so you could preserve the 'dry' egg for posterity. Don't suppose this is allowed any more is it? Richard Edwards was brilliant at this. In fact he was good at all country pursuits, especially shooting the porcelain bits off the tops of telegraph poles with his state-of-the-art catapult. Carp fishing - except that ain't a game, believe me. All that solitude, all that 'watery bit of the World', all those big, fat, gold-scaled lumps of mystery. Magic. For a delicious taste of this read 'Casting at the Sun' by Chris Yates. Don't worry, you won't have to like fishing to appreciate this book, believe me. Was about to say that's when I started to grow up but obviously that would be a lie.