Games kids play

(Diane and Me)

It cracked me up the other night in Patch Club when the kids were thrilled with my "new game." We played the game where you stand on a chair, hold a clothes pin to your nose, and try to drop it into a bottle. I didn't tell them that their grandparents probably played this game!

It's funny that even with the allure of video games and cable TV, you just can't beat a good outside game.

I remember playing:

Tag in all of its various forms - freeze tag, cartoon tag . . . and we would play for hours.

Ghost in the graveyard - I don't remember the details, but I remember we played it in the dark usually at Grandmother and Grandpa Barger's house when all of the cousins were there.

Bombardament - we played this at school. It was a cutthroat outside version of dodgeball. I remember someone usually went to the nurse and it was hard on my brown suede dress shoes.

Red Rover - again someone usually went to the nurse

Tug of war on the merry-go-round - I don't think this was an approved use of the merry-go-round, but the boys would be on one side trying to push one direction and the girls were on the other side pushing the opposite direction. Fortunately in gradeschool girls tend to be bigger than boys.

Hopscotch - I remember actually having to wait in line to play hopscotch.

My favorite outside game, however, was one my sister and I invented. They say necessity is the mother of invention - well necessity helped invent this game. It was summer and we were hot and we didn't have a pool, but what we did have was an empty dishsoap bottle.

We would fill the empty dishsoap bottle with water and stick the bottle down our pants (with the cap off), we would then run around the house (thank goodness we lived in a small house that had a long driveway) - the winner was whoever could get around the house before their water ran out. Many, many hot summer days were spent playing this game.

The first year Brian and I were married, I saved all my empty dishsoap bottles. Brian found them under the sink one day. When he asked me why I kept them I told him about our game. He didn't want to play until I told him we used to play it in our underwear!