Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – September 12, 2004

Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – September 12, 2004

Childhood Games

Short Stories From 10 Years Ago – September 12, 2004 – Many kids growing up in the fifties had one or two cherished toys – not the rooms full of them that children seem to have today. We weren’t inundated with gifts at Christmas and maybe – just maybe – we were better for it.

I see children today and their closets are stuffed full of every imaginable product on the market. They sit, surrounded by playthings, but clutching a favourite Teddy. There may be a message here, but being a childless woman, happily I don’t have to wonder what it is. The Alphabet Boys get along just fine with their toys. Ziggy has a frog stuffed with catnip and Augie has two well chewed bones. Both boys are happy and well-adjusted.

My public school years were spent, for the most part, in a country school. Most of us were just ordinary children – the sons and daughters of tradespeople, farmers, business owners, teachers or professionals. I don’t think we had a single “rich” kid at our school, and if we had, he or she would have been treated the same way as everyone else.

The school had grades one through eight, and the available toys and games had to be shared amongst us all. Inside we had the usual crafts, crayons for colouring, books, blackboard and chalk. Morning and afternoon recess and lunch hour were always spent outside – rain, snow or sunshine.

Little girls had skipping ropes and precious little else. Little boys played in the sand or on the long driveway that snaked in from the highway in front of the school. Most of us rode our bikes in nice weather and walked in the winter. We all brought our snacks and lunch in a paper bag or lunch box. Once kids were old enough to participate in “games” there was an unwritten rule that you played.

No preferential treatment was given to you because you were small. It was a co-ed school and we played on the teeter-totter and the swings or at baseball, track and field, fort building, toboggan sliding, crack the whip on the ice pond in the winter and the age-old perennial “Red Rover” when the weather was warm.

I recall one winter when I was in grade two or three. An older kid told me to put on a pair of boys hockey skates and play crack the whip. I was small and needless to say, my position wasn’t on the cracking end of the whip. I struggled to stay upright on ill-fitting skates. I was flying around the ice so fast, I’ll never know how I managed to stay on my feet, but I remember one of the grade eight boys screaming out, “Okay, crack it”. Everyone skidded to an abrupt halt and the kid who had my hand let go. My body became an instant projectile.

I shot through the air head first, over the snow banks surrounding the ice rink, and hurtled through the trees until gravity brought my flight to an unceremonious conclusion. I ended up on my back – a lump in the snow. I could hear the raucous laughter of the kids on the rink. No one came to see if I was okay and when I struggled back to the ice on wobbly legs, someone said, “Wanna play again?”

If you were a good sport – they left you alone after your maiden flight and picked on the next small kid. There was no dearth of us. You learned to keep your mouth shut and you never told the teacher. I sometimes wonder how I survived that rough and tumble country school.

If you think crack the whip was rough – it was nothing compared to Red Rover. Until I got older and bigger, I used to dread hearing the chant – “Red Rover – Red Rover – send Rosie right over”. My little legs would churn across the field as fast as they could carry me. I knew I’d end up bent around the arms of two kids like a horseshoe, or if I succeeded in breaking through – skidding to an abrupt stop on the ground. When I was older I relished plotting a strategy with my team mates, breaking through a weak link on the other team, and then dragging some poor, hapless kid back to my side of the field.

In really serious games, we played on the hill and traded “the advantage” to the other side, depending on who was winning. I remember seeing some huge lug thundering down the hill – headed for my end of the line – where another kid and I clung desperately to each other’s interlocked wrists. I don’t know why my arm wasn’t broken or my shoulder dislocated. We had bruises on our arms and legs all the time – but somehow we pulled through. The playground gods must have been on my side because I made it through public school relatively unscathed.

We played baseball every year and had marble championships and checker tournaments all year long. We also had this weird game where we tied a red-white and blue rubber ball in the toe end of an old nylon stocking an then stood with our back to the wall of the school. The aim of the game was to swing your arm in a huge arc in front of your body so the ball hit the wall on your other side. Naturally it bounced back. As your rhythm got faster, the ball bounced off the wall harder and harder. The goal was to stand on the foot of your arm-swinging side and raise and lower your opposing arm and leg into the path of the swinging ball – with the object of the entire process being – “Don’t hurt yourself”.

I’m sure some dunderhead repeating grade eight for the third time, made up this idiotic game. Nevertheless – we loved it and I’m sure it did wonders for our reflexes and coordination.

Track and field and baseball were taken seriously and our little school – U-11 -2 Derby and Sydenham (Rockford Public School) always did well. I sometimes wonder if any of my former classmates think about those days. My brother and I laugh about them sometimes, when we chatting about growing up in a small, Ontario town.

There were advantages and disadvantages to being a country kid – but overall it built character, stamina and survival instincts. I’m convinced that those years spawned my tenacity, my appreciation of nature and my raucous, ever-present sense of humour. All-in-all not a bad way to grow up!