This is yet another post that will be based on the second topic of the week. I will be talking about my favorite childhood games.
We all had a childhood. It could have been a fun one, a strict one, a carefree or pampered one, it did not matter. Every single person had a childhood. And during that time we all had what we did that made us have good times.
Back then, there was no social media. As a matter of fact, the only form of media that was available was the television and the radio and while those were fun in their own rights, nothing could beat the thrill of playing with people your own age. Running about the street with zero care in the world because you know that your parents have it all covered for you.
There were games I enjoyed playing back then, I will tell you about some of them. And please note that most of them I do not know their actual names, so I will call them by what we used to call them back then, then I will do my best to describe them so that you can get an idea of what I am talking about.
This game is more widely known as the Tag. Although catcher-catcher sounds better in my ears, hehe.
It involves us children getting together in a circle, and while singing a rhyme, we would be eliminated from the circle one by one. The last child to be eliminated becomes “IT” and he has to chase the others until he catches or touches at least one of them. Whoever he touches becomes “IT” and the game continues.
It goes on like this for a very long time until we all are tired, and most of the time we never get tired until it begins to get dark and our parents start calling us home one by one. It was always loads of fun.
This is more widely known as Cops and Robbers. Here the children will be split into two groups, one half will be the thieves and the others will be the police. And so the police will have to chase the thieves and round them up.
Unlike catcher-catcher, once you are the police or thief, you will remain like that until the game ends. Which is probably when everyone packs up and goes home. This means the police will always be chasing and the thieves will always be running.
Back then though, most of us always wanted to be thieves because we found being police to be quite boring. As thieves, you could look for smart places to hide in and they would never find you. But that was also the problem because when the police got tired of searching they gave up and the game became dull.
Police and thief is an energetic game that requires a lot of running and hiding, sometimes we even did some ‘shootings’ with toy guns and that meant some of us had to fake death. There would be fake arrests, fake locking up behind bars, and fake escapes.
Those days, during play you would be hearing things like, “it is in your head I shot you not your leg, you are supposed to die.”
And a reply like this would go, “no joor! Is it not me that died yesterday? I am not dying again. Lagbaja has been going since, let him die na!”
“It is true o!” And the toy gun will be pointed at Lagbaja and he will be shot. So Lagbaja would have to clutch his chest or head or wherever the shooter said he shot him, then gently lower himself to the ground and make a show of dying.
The game would continue though, by the time he gets bored on the ground, he would rise up from the dead and become a thief once again. What a repeat offender!
As a child, this was one of my favorite indoor games. The most popular one back then was Whot. A pack had about fifty cards inside, and they were all numbered from one to twenty. Each card had either a circle, star, triangle, cross, or square drawn on it. There were cards that had special features and cheats.
Like number one cards signaled Hold on.
Number two cards signaled Pick Two which meant the next person was to pick up two cards.
Number eight cards signaled Suspension (kind of like Hold onif you ask me).
Number fourteen cards signaled General Market whereby all the players took one card from the market.
Number twenty was also called I Need. Because it could be played at any time at all, and you could demand whatever kind of card you needed and the others would have to play it. It is usually kept for the end of the game to secure the win.
It is played by shuffling all the cards and then distributing it among the players, giving them a limited amount of cards; one will be placed in the middle while the others will be used as the market. The market serves as a supply in the event that a player does not have a correlating card with the one that is needed to be played.
The climactic moment of the game is when someone is almost out of cards and then you hear him/her saying things like “Last card!”
Then everyone will try their best to make him take more cards so he does not get to win. And if they fail and he is able to play the last one, he will say “check-up!”
Actually, it is important to say these things because if youu don't there will be a fine. You will be probably given another card for your laziness.
And so friends, of course, there were other games I played as a child, but these were the ones that stood out for me.
As you all know, it was the kid with the best toys that usually dictated how the games would go. If it was a ball, the owner will choose who he played with and so take the best players. If you did not like it, then you will not play ball.
Even if you did play and it turns out his team was not so good, so you guys are really beating them in the game, he can get angry and take his ball home.
The match is over for that day unless you all try to convince him or maybe allow his team to score a goal or two. That was how it worked then, if you did not like it tell your mummy to go and buy your own ball.
But then when someone else bought a ball, the paradigm shifted and now two people controlled the games.
And woe betides you if they were friends.
Wow… it seems I have really written a lot. I guess going down memory lane today was quite an experience.
Looking back at what we enjoyed back then, the security and confidence our parents had those days when children could go out to play and they would not be bothered or scared because they trusted their neighborhood.
And today, things are really different. Children do not socialize anymore, everything is now on social media or on television. The ones that do meet do not play games unless the game is on the phone. That connection that is built among children running around the streets screaming at the top of their lungs in sheer joy is lacking in children these days.
I do not think we would ever be able to go back to those days, but I do hope that children of this generation will be able to connect with their agemates on a physical and personal level. Not just in the safety of their homes, behind the glare of their phone screens.
Hopefully, everything will work out in the end.
Thank you for reading, till we meet in the next post.
