RECESS!

There was one of these in a park and me and my brother ALWAYS wanted to go there. Monkey bars were my favourite too.

I played a game that, if I were to do it today, I would call "Mind Control". I would wander around the playground and try to mentally command the other children to do things.

All recess, every recess.

I don't remember what my success rate was, but I never gave up.

Also, I had a jetpack.

We did a "last man standing" kinda skateboard game on an outdoors basketball field. It became really popular and even got some decent rules before it got shut down by the oppressors.

We didn't even get to have a singel serious injury before the shut down.

Love playing with these. We had a game where two people would chase eachother around and the first to be tagged lost. But wverytime you got to the end you had to kick your legs over one side.

I also loveeeeddddd Tetherball!

What about Wallball or Peg? We used to get in trouble for playing that. You had to throw a ball at a wall and let it bounce once and then someone else had to catch it and if they missed, they had to run to the wall before someone else nailed them with the ball. The trick was to throw the ball at the wall as hard as possible so it was impossible to catch and thus, you had a better chance at nailing someone with it. We called it Peg when we used a tennis ball instead of a dodgeball. It was a painful game.

We played soccer and king's ball, which was a game played with a tennis ball on a field consisting of 4 squares. It was tons of fun and I was good at it. Tried to find a description of the game online, but haven't found anything yet, hm.

I went to school in the ghetto, but we did have one of these. I'd basically sit on top of it and read and be weird. also played soccer a lot if they'd let us go on the field.

fsdghcamel wrote:

I went to school in the ghetto, but we did have one of these. I'd basically sit on top of it and read and be weird. also played soccer a lot if they'd let us go on the field.

I never did know what to do on one of those. We used to play King of the Mountain on it and someone would usually end up getting pretty hurt and we'd get in trouble.

Being a boy is awesome.

Not to brag or anything but I was pretty damn good at all the Four Square games.

I remember playing football with the more athletic kids.

I'd stand at the opposing teams end of the field, way out in the open without a single soul around yelling "Hey I'm open! Throw it to me!" while watching the QB take five minutes to throw to his best friend who never caught the ball because he was always boxed in. I wasn't a good catch but even if I missed it it would take 10 seconds before anybody could even reach me.

We never really kept score but I'd never see anybody from my team make it to where I was standing.

For recess, all we had was the "blacktop", which was basically the closed off parking lot in front of the school. 'Twas huge, but barren, rough, and uneven. There were two basketball hoops at one end, and nothing in the other (people would use that area for touch football). Kids would fight over who used the hoops that day, or just fight in general. Everyone else would look for shade in the desert sun and chat it up.

Sounds depressing, but it was actually rather awesome. We took pride in having the shittiest recess area in the city, and we got more schoolyard brawls out of it.

I kicked ass at Chinese Jump Rope and Dodge Ball.

This is my actual elementary school! This was our blacktop playground, but apparently they've just put in "new" classrooms.

We also fought often and had to depend on a sort of gang mentality to survive the harrowing horrific-ocity that is 7 year old combat. I remember once a girl had a braid ripped off of her head because she wouldn't surrender the four-square ball.

Skool of hard-knocks, yo.

In that case, consider the gauntlet thrown.

Outside in, inside out, no overhand, no bobbles... or the equivalent in your neck of the woods.

MiggityMcWilly wrote:

This is my actual elementary school! This was our blacktop playground, but apparently they've just put in "new" classrooms.

We also fought often and had to depend on a sort of gang mentality to survive the harrowing horrific-ocity that is 7 year old combat. I remember once a girl had a braid ripped off of her head because she wouldn't surrender the four-square ball.

Skool of hard-knocks, yo.

I got my fillings knocked out so many times, and my Gameboy was stolen on multiple occasions, for which more heads had to be knocked, because electronics weren't allowed. I'd've chosen a more relaxed school any day. But what can you do?

Hehehee, haven't seen that before.

It's a favorite of mine. Double-contraction, FTW!

That, and the archaic "mayn't".

As in, "Prithee, Mother, mayn't I have a piece of horehound after supper?"

I can't stand "oughtn't".

Back to topic:

In pre-prep school I was goalkeeper for the boy's football team and we practised on this really horrible asphalt concrete area during morning break. There were always a lot bloody knees and elbows.

Stuck in the mud and british bulldog (RIP) were also popular games.

What's stuck in the mud?

British Bulldog was the one. Until the inevitable moment when someone yelled "BUNDLE!" and the whole school would dive on top of them.

Essentially Tag, but once someone gets tapped on the arm by a "Tagger", to be freed, another person (not the Tagger) must dive under their legs. Once everyone is caught by the Tagger, game is over.

Grandmother's Footsteps was awesome too.

We played suicide. You had to throw a tennis ball or a blue ball at the wall and people would try to catch it. If you caught it, you had to throw it at the wall. If it hit you or you tried to catch it and dropped it, you had to run and touch the wall and yell "suicide!" - and until you did that, anyone could pick up the ball and throw it at you as hard as they could. It was very fast-paced and intense. And frightening.

I would've played thast game.

also we would play that game but we called it butt's up because instead of pegging the person before they reached the wall the rule was that if the ball reached the wall before you did you had to stand up against the wall and everyone who was playing got to peg you with the ball as you stood against the wall with your butt up.

swings were the big thing in my elementary school. as soon as recess started everyone would bolt to the swings and claim one for the entire recess.

if you lost the race, which i usually did on purpose, you were left playing swingset chicken. sometimes it ended badly, but it was way more fun for me than just swinging.

Ooooh, now I get it. We totally played Butts Up. I wonder if that's a Southern CA thing

I played that once, too. Very similar to suicide. This was many years later...so I'm guessing it evolved out of suicide.

When I was really little (Kindergarten) and still lived in Florida, I would stick my arms in the bushes and cover myself in spiders and insects and chase the other kids and the teachers around.

When I moved to Oregon, I mainly jumped rope and twirled on the merry-go-round, if my school de jour had one and I was forced to go out and play. I was always the new kid and as a result, I found it best to stay away from the other kids while they weren't heavily supervised. I usually asked the teacher if I could stay inside and wipe down the chalkboards or desks or help anyway I could to stay away from the sadistic little bastards.

We played 'suicide' but we just called it peg.

We also played stick in the mud, but with the much less interesting name of 'freeze tag'.

We used to play 'Assassin' with the dart guns until they banned it. After that it was the old standby:

I've flown off of a merry-go-round before i was one of the smaller runts I also almost got caught under one. Which reminds me of the dreaded bump slide i fell off of...well some pushed me down.

Pogs

We used to call it the vomitorium. You would have competitions to see who could last the longest without chowdering.

When I grew up in Mexico we played with an old tire we found by the river. We rolled it up and down the embankment. One of the kids got overly excited and it rolled into the river. We never got the tire back. We then had to get back to shoving packs of marijuana into soccer balls.

we used to play pogs. my aunt gave me a set that had all the presidents on them.

we also played red rover, chinese jump rope, foursquare...We also played this awesome game we called snake where we'd hold hands and the person in front would run in a crazy pattern across the field as fast as they could and pretty much the person at the end had to keep up or they would eat shit.

In Mexico we used to play with pogs also. Well really we played with pigs. That was until we had to kill them in order to eat.

Yes. Once here I became great friends with my next door neighbor and played with her all the time. Unfortunately we had to killer her so we could eat.

Lets all play kiss chase!

I used to play knuckle bones, elastics, 4 square, and truth or dare, that was when I was 10-13ish. When I was younger me and my friends climbed trees and played games in them, that was the best.

Elastics! <3

My friends and I would play "retard" tag. Basically, whoever was "it" had to act retarded until they tagged someone else and then they had to act retarded. We ran with limps and drooled and spoke mumbly gibberish. Looking back on it now, I seemed like a sociopath in my younger days.

Yeah, we totally played that! And cat's cradle.

what is elastics?

This!

so chinese jump rope!