This week, fun. The fun of once upon a long time ago, when my generation were children.
Fun was to go outdoors. My sibs and I went to “the other house” (where the cousins lived) to play. Likewise, our house was “the other house” to them, where they came to play.
For the girls, there was jackstones. Do they even play that still?
You have a set of 10 jackstones and a ball. You throw the jackstones on the floor (in our case that was the front porch of whichever house), bounce the ball, pick up a jackstone and put it in your other hand and then catch the ball before it bounces again.
You bounce the ball again and pick up another jackstone, transfer it to your other hand, and then catch the ball again before it bounces another time. You do this until you're done with the 10 jackstones.
Then you throw the jackstones on the floor, and do as you did the first time around, but picking up two jackstones. When done with the two jackstones round, you graduate to three, and so on until you are done with the 10 jackstones round. Only the skilled make it to that round.
After that elementary set, you graduate to what we called “exhibition,” when you get fancy. I.e., “Cave,” which requires that you make a cave of your one hand on the floor, and then put a jackstone in the cave before the ball bounces a second time. Then you do a second round and put two jackstones at a time in the cave... all the way to putting 10 of them in the cave.
Ten such “exhibitions” were required to -- like -- win.
The boys, they had these slingshots which they made themselves.
They are inverted Ys of wood to which each end of the Y is tied to a strip of rubber you then stretch with a stone lodged in the rubber strip.
When you let go, the stone goes after whatever you aim at: unlucky bird in sight, cans in a row on a bench in the backyard, particular targets the boys sight and decide to compete aiming at, etc.
I'm now thinking, that slingshot was a dangerous weapon, in my childhood called a “palsiit.”
For boys and girls, there was Dodgeball, often played “boys against girls.”
So the girls stand at two lines located opposite each other, the boys in the middle. The girls throw the ball at the boys, and anyone hit by the ball is “out.” The last boy standing has then to not be hit 10 times the ball is thrown his way. He survives this and the boys score.
But aha, the girls get a chance to even up that score by matching the boys' win. So then it becomes a best of three or of five. We use heavy basketballs until I decide that they hurt, and introduce the smallish plastic ball, white with stripes, yes, Then, no hits ever anymore hurt anyone playing.
We played “sik-king” and basketball with a goal the boys built themselves. We chased after butterflies, we played in the park, we ran a lot, whether that was playing Tag or not. We hiked off to the treehouse the boys, again, built themselves.
I'm thinking now, winning was just winning and no material prizes were to be had.
It was all in Good. Clean. Fun.