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If I was in school today, I’d be in so much trouble.

I recall that a friend of mine and I in sixth grade used to conduct interplanetary wars during lunch hour with pencils and rulers on manila paper. We each drew our own picture, but would spar verbally about who had the upper hand in the depicted battle. To be honest, he was more creative than I was, and I would follow his lead for the most part. Of course, the ruler guided bullets were flying in these depictions, which seemed very realistic to us. The teacher surveyed all this with equanimity. She was very popular with the girls because of her proclivity for leading the class in singing popular songs such as TAMMY, which I remember in particular. She would let on that these singing sessions were some sort of daring clandestine activity. Nevertheless, she did allow us our space battles.

We did something similar in study halls. We would play war using pencil and paper where each side would have tanks, planes, foxholes, artillery, helicopters and so on. We would swish a pencil across the paper and if it hit anything, it was taken out. You can move as well using dashes as a path. Usually one player was the USA the other was usually the USSR or perhaps Iran, this was 1979/80 after all.