We boomers didn’t always have it easy but we had it simple. Children’s games today are often electronic or electric or have become so organized and regulated that much of the fun has been squeezed out. Competitive parents sometimes forget to let their kids enjoy being kids. Our parents were just glad we weren’t standing in front of the refrigerator asking for more grape Kool-Ade.
One of the earliest games I remember was some variation of “Mother, May I?” Just the name makes it too uncool for kids today. Players would line up at a certain distance from the leader who usually stood at the top of some steps. The object was to get to the leader before anyone else. The leader would call each individual by name and give a set of instructions. “Mary Annabel, Take one giant step, two twirls and a frog leap.” If Mary Annabel remembered to ask, “Mother, May I?” she could follow the instructions and advance accordingly. If she forgot to ask the question, or left out the two twirls, Mary Annabel had to go all the way back to the beginning. The key to making the game harder was to call out commands quickly and make them complicated. The more exciting the game became, the more likely a player was to forget to ask permission and have to start over. We played the game at Bible School when I was eight or nine. There were several levels of steps leading to the Unity Presbyterian Sanctuary so the game could take a while. I remember once, standing on the playground of the Elementary School looking at the countless steps to the First Baptist Church and thinking that their “Mother May I” games must have been much more exciting than ours.
Before Stephen King poisoned the neighborhood with killer clowns, the favorite evening game was Hide and Seek. Kids from the neighborhood would gather in one yard just at dark and agree on a set of boundaries. The person who was the seeker sometimes designated as “It” would stand at home base, usually the big dogwood in our front yard, and count to one-hundred, or pretend to. At the end of the counting, he or she would call out “All not ready holler ‘I’.” The sneakiest kids, or maybe the laziest, would hide out near the base and hope the seeker would start looking in the other direction. If that happened the risk paid off and he or she could race in and tag base safely. Other kids enjoyed the thrill of hiding and would curl up as small as possible barely breathing and hope not to be found at all. If a hiding place was good enough, the chosen seeker would eventually give up the search and call “Olly, olly in free” and the hider could do a victory stroll back to base.
There was always some kid who, ignoring the boundaries, would hide two blocks away in Mrs. Drakeford’s shrubbery and would never be found. We would eventually give up looking and hope he showed up at school the next day. He always did and swore he was inside the boundary and just a good hider.
At Fort Mill Central School in the 1950’s, every boy had a favorite marble. Some of you will snicker at that but it is true. We called it our “shooter” and our fortune of pocket marbles depended on it. No playground equipment was needed. We would just draw two rings in the dirt. In these antiseptic times I am not sure that the Health Inspector even allows playgrounds to have dirt anymore. It makes me wonder what kids rub on a scraped knee. To begin, one of us would take a popsicle stick and draw a more-or-less circular marble ring about three feet across. Inside, roughly in the middle, we would draw a smaller ring. It was a time of approximation. If marbles were to become a popular sport again today, I am sure the rings would be standardized on a piece of AstroTurf.
Each player, the number could vary, would then risk an agreed upon number of marbles in the center ring like the rack on a pool table.
Most games would begin with someone saying “No clod-knockers or steelies!” Clod-knockers, sometimes called Giants were oversized marbles about the size of a Brussel sprout. The advantage of such a lunker was obvious. Steelies were ball-bearings and a strong player could sometimes crack your shooter with one. Other marbles were called crystals, cat’s eyes, blood streaks and there were even red, yellow and blue Superman marbles. Each player in turn, would try to knock one of the center marbles out of the big ring. At the end of the game, according to school rules, marbles had to be returned to their original owners.
“No playing for keeps!” was often the rule but seldom the fact. Unless a principal was nearby, if your marble left the big ring, it went home in someone else’s pocket. In marbles as in life, there are winners and losers. My uncle, Mr. Case, eighth grade math teacher and recess supervisor, would occasionally join a game of marbles. He was the playground equivalent of a gunslinger and the ranks of players thinned when he entered the game. Only the intrepid or the foolish would dare challenge him.
Another playground favorite was “Rolly-Bat.” It was played like baseball but did not require teams, or bases or lines. One player was at bat, one was the pitcher and the rest were fielders. There was no set number of fielders and the batter might face five or twenty-five. The pitcher threw the ball and the batter hit it. The game was played with a ball that was softer than a regular baseball since gloves were optional. If a fielder caught the ball in the air, he or she became the batter. Even when the ball rolled to a stop on its own, the fielder still had a chance. The batter would lay the bat on the ground and the fielder could throw or roll the ball toward it. If the ball hit the bat, the fielder took over as batter. There was no keeping score and there were no winners or losers. The game ended when the recess bell rang.
So what did we learn from those early games? From “Mother, May I?” we learned that politeness and good manners won’t always take us home but it will keep us from hindering our own progress. It also taught us to be creative. A good leader would make up moves like “three cricket hops” or “two tightrope steps” or “one backward twirl.” While the game is mostly innocuous, it has its dark side. We learned that we could be within a toad hop of reaching our goal and suddenly one tiny mistake would send us, head down, slinking back to square one. Harsh lesson for an eight-year-old.
Sometimes I think life is one big, disorganized game of “Hide and Seek.” We are not sure what we are looking for and we’re not completely sure where home base is. Sometimes life takes us by surprise and hits us when we are looking the other way. Sometimes the thing we want most seems so close we can hear it breathing and yet it slips away. The game was often co-ed and that gave boys and girls an early opportunity to chase each other and we all know where that leads.
The game of marbles has its own set of life lessons. “This is for all the marbles” means, of course, that we are willing to risk it all. “Playing for keeps” translates from marbles to life as “If you’re not serious, let’s end this now.” And then there’s “Lost your marbles” a phrase my parents used when I had some hairbrained scheme that was doomed to failure. “No, Mike, You cannot have a horse in the back yard like Joe Hinson. Have you lost your marbles?”
And then there’s “Rolly Bat” Finally we have a childhood game that today’s kids can relate to. From “Rolly Bat” we learned that even if we drop the ball there is a second chance. Failure is not final or fatal. We don’t even let the team down since there aren’t any teams, and there is no scoring. There are only momentary wins and temporary losses. We also learn that when the bell calls us off the playground, there will be another day and a fresh start.
Here’s what I think today’s kids are missing. Video games can challenge their imaginations but cannot teach them social skills. They don’t teach them how to lose gracefully in front of their friends. Organized sports get kids outside and teach them competition but winning and losing becomes more important than having fun.
What do today’s kids need more than anything? I believe the answer is boredom. Nothing makes a young person more inventive than an hour or two of having nothing to do. So maybe we should give our children or grandchildren the of gift empty space…of free time. Who knows, they might just build us a better world.
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