Posted on 06/05/2019 4:49:57 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
Regards,
I raised my kids (all boys) over the past 20-plus years. And, up to when they all were teens, around 5 years ago, they were playing the same games that were popular when I was a kid. They just had different names for some of them.
For example, "Capture the Flag" - one of the games you mentioned - was still called "Capture the Flag."
But, they had a different name for another game: In this game, the kids split into two groups, and one group had to chase after and catch the other. When I was a kid, we played a version of that game, running through streets and alleys. My own kids played the same game with other kids in the woods at night.
But, with all that said, maybe this is the difference you've picked up on: While some kids still hang out in their own neighborhoods, others travel away from their neighborhoods to see their friends. For example, my kids never hung out around the neighborhood. They didn't know anyone around here. They played most of those games in scouts. Or I would drive them and drop them off somewhere for them to get together with their friends.
In the old days, a friend might knock on your door to see if you could come outside. Today the kids are texting each other. And, to get together, their parents have to drive them.
In the old days, you might talk with your friends on the phone. Now they're skyping and playing games online with each other.
When I was a kid, our parents just said, "Go outside." Then they'd push us out the door.
When my own kids were kids, I'd tell them, "Get in the car." Then I'd drop them off somewhere.
Maybe that's the difference.
Yes, it’s been proven in Chicago the guns, knives and gangs are safer after school programs.
I hated dodgeball, just hated it with all my heart and soul.
I was much smaller than the other kids and really smart, which means the bullies hated me, and used dodgeball to torment me.
I cannot count the number of times my glasses were broken and my nose bloodied because they’d run up and throw it full force into my face...I hated it, being subjected to psychopathic thugs hurting me like that.
I know people here say that makes kids tough, teaches them to defend themselves, but that didn’t work for me...it was just utter hell, and I began cutting PE, which got me in trouble, got me detention and really led to a long series of truancies and bad grades.
Dodgeball is great for those kids who enjoy it, but if it’s used by bullies to torment kids they should have the right to opt out.
I think you are right.
What seems so different to me is that neighborhood kids don’t congregate any more, or at least it appears that way.
If you wanted to have a baseball game, you could cobble together enough kids in a neighborhood, and it wouldn’t be impossible. You had to make a phone call here and there, but generally, it was just scraping up kids as you rode on your bike around the neighborhood.
I just don’t see enough kids outdoors now to think that would be even possible, never mind desirable.
LOL, playing a game like “Red Rover” was one of the few ways a complete bumbling incompetent like me could get skin contact with the opposite sex!
Funny, years later I visited the old neighborhood, and went to the town swimming pool where I somehow bumped into a gal who had been one of the neighborhood kids...
She said I had broken her leg playing tackle football (as wed did, with no helmets or pads) and she had to spend a couple of months in a leg cast because of me!!!!
I was abashed, I had forgotten all about it!
“”” Of course, as an adult, I can see that the game might be used by some kids to pick on others. “””
As a skinny, quiet kid, I was often the last one on my team with 2-3 tough kids on the other side. There would be threats of bodily harm after gym if I were to hit one of them.
massholes
We used to play a similar game in scouts - Frisbee Rundown.
Same setup with people divided into separate groups on either side of a DMZ, but it started with 2 scouts in the middle, with a frisbee. They’d pass the frisbee back and forth, and everyone had to make for the other side of the field before they passed the frisbee 3 times.
You usually waited until they made a bad pass, and then you’d run for it.
They’d eliminate players by throwing the frisbee at them, or slapping them with it as they ran by. We’d lose count of how many scouts got nailed with the frisbee in the back of the head.
Last scout standing won.
I remember Andy busting both wrists doing a slam dunk at a pep rally before a basketball game.
I’m glad that Marty’s accident didn’t cause reconsideration of the game in the district. It was the 70’s-—and John was his father. They don’t make them like that any more.
It was probably the sixth grade. Maybe the fifth. I wouldn’t call it an accident; he was caught in a crossfire. The worst of it was that I had to appear in both school productions of Tom Sawyer, as Marty was slated to star in one of them.
Thank you, both of you, for telling the “other side of the story.”
The grownups should’ve put a stop to that behavior and kicked those kids out of the game.
Then again, in my day, sometimes the grownups would encourage that behavior and even join in on the “fun,” from what I recall as the shy girl back in grade school. Sometimes the kids behaved well, but the coaches and teachers were brutal.
Cross fire? I assume prison dodge ball—which was the form used about 95% of the time in gym during my time.
It wasn’t as good as STQ, but I have my doubts that there were many other schools in the district where STQ was played—I had never heard of it from any other source until this thread. Greenacres had at least one thing going for it.
Prison ball, dodgeball...It was played with multiple balls, so you could throw one or more to your teammates in prison, and make your opponent try to look both ways. It was perfectly timed: one ball hit inside the elbow, the other, inside the wrist, from opposite directions STQ was generally an impromptu game in the field, during recess. Whoever had the ball was the Q, and it was a free-for-all. There may have been teams trying to advance the ball. Mostly it was just a melee. Good times.
My favorite recess game was mumblety peg. This was in the 1950’s when we all wore leather shoes.
I can’t believe this particular version of sadism is a “conservative cause” now.
I can see that break happening. And someone who excels athletically and is known for it is the most likely candidate.
Yep, that was how we played STQ. There have been two other versions of the game explained on this thread, and they were not really as rough as we played. And that was in the early 80’s. Of course, my grade in Greenacres only numbered 12—1 girl and 11 boys.
About half the school grounds were out of bounds for recess—which reduced the number of places where there was no effective supervision from six to two.
We were in the woods and on the wrong side of the chain link fence, some of the time. It had gaps in it so you could retrieve balls from the creek, or hunt snakes and salamanders. Now, it’s built like a prison, to keep the pedophiles at arm’s length.
That actually brings back memories—at least the fence—before we moved to Greenacres we lived on South Fifth for 11 months—Tim Wall and his wife bought the house from my parents. So I spent most of first grade in Mrs. Bushong’s class at Blossom Gulch. I don’t remember anyone playing smear the queer, but do remember being thought odd because my parents were voting for Ford. And I do remember the fence.
When I moved out to Greenacres for the last month of first grade I actually found myself nearly hopelessly behind in first grade. Mrs. Kelly, who had moved into D-9 teaching after Coos Catholic closed, had the Greenacres kids about a million miles ahead in math of where we were in Blossom. Being Greenacres, that didn’t last, but it was a good lesson in humility.
I know.
We also had corporal punishment at my junior high school. You’d have to pull your pants down and the PE coach would slap you, hard, on your butt with a paddle.
I really, really hated school because of that.
See ya’,
Ed
No wonder you hated school. I hated it, too.
It was like reporting to prison every day. lol
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.