Listography...Games I Used to Play

Kids these days don't know how lucky they are!  As they play with toys we couldn't even have dreamt of back in our childhoods, they have no idea of the kinds of things that we used to do.  Back in the '70s, the most innovative game in our house was Mousetrap...we marvelled at the plastic contraption that caught that little mouse, even though it never worked properly!  It was cutting edge technology as far as I was concerned.  A world away from the electronic marvels that my children take for granted today.

Reminiscing about the games we played, these are my five favourite childhood past times for this week's Listography.

1:  I have no idea what this is called but it involved a leg of a pair of tights, a tennis ball and a brick wall!  You stood in front of the wall with your back to it, and bounced the tennis ball, which was in the foot of the tight to either side of you, getting faster and faster.  Pointless??  Indeed it was!  But I'd do it for hours on end!  Sometimes, if you got brave, you could bounce the ball from above your head to between your legs...that was a hardcore version.

2:  I lived next door to a haulage yard and many of my games involved playing with the owner's children on the backs of the lorries.  We used to play make believe games where we were superheroes or stars of our own TV show called "One Hour of Fun" (it had its own theme song and everything!)  We also ran a holiday company where we sold holidays to Arab Sheikhs in exchange for camels. We made a telephone out of cardboard to run our business from. We had good imaginations in those days!!

3: Pom Pom...this was hide in seek where once you were found you had to race the person who was "it" back to the designated "home", getting there before they did.  When they found you they would shout "Pom Pom" and your name before running back home.  They were words you longed not to hear!

4:  Another game that I can't remember the name of was when you made a big loop of elastic (pinched from your mum's sewing basket) and two people stood opposite each other with their legs inside the loop.  A third person then jumped inside, outside, inside, on...landing on the elastic in a flourish of athleticism to end their go.  Again, not sure why, but it was all the craze at our school!

5: Kiss Chase was a fave way to spend playtime.  A playground full of boys and girls would frantically run around try desperately hard not to be caught by the opposite sex.  The fear of receiving a kiss was so great that I wonder how this game was ever invented.  Even when you were the chaser, you didn't want to land a smacker on the lips of a boy...heaven forbid!  So it was lots of show on both sides, resulting in no kissing whatsoever.  Several years later, similar games ensued, but they were at nightclubs with very different results.

We may not have had PS3, Leap Frog, X Box, VTech or Nintendo...but we had fun!