“Ring Around the Rosie” for my sister’s birthday & a backyard production of “Cowboys.”
At Play
“Annie I Over,” ” New Orleans.”
In shorts or dresses or cutoff jeans,
we ran and threw and played and shouted.
our pent-up energy thus outed.
“Send ‘Em,” “Ditch ‘Em,” “Cops and Robbers.”
“Poor Pussy” turned us into sobbers.
Do you remember these childhood games?
All vastly varied, with different names?
Before TV or internet,
games were as good as one could get
for transport from reality.
Back when we were cellphone-free,
“Drop the Handkerchief” we knew well
along with “Farmer in the Dell.”
“London Bridge” went falling down
each birthday party in our town.
All the long-lit summer nights
“Cowboys and Indians” staged their fights.
“Cops and Robbers” led to searches
of school ditches and behind churches.
The whole town our playing ground,
each chid lost, each child found
in hours long games of “Hide-and-Seek.”
Count to one hundred. Do not peek!
In childhood games of girls and boys,
imaginations were our toys.
Does such magic now reside
in minds of children safe inside
their cushioned worlds of rumpus rooms,
sealed safe within their houses’ wombs?
For dangers real now lurk in places
that formerly hid playmates’ faces.
Safety dictates different measures
for insuring childhood pleasures.
But oh, I remember so well
joyful flight and heartful swell
of friends pursuing through the dark
back then when life was such a lark.
Now children seek play differently
on cellphone screens and Smart TV,
scarce imagining a world
with internet not yet unfurled.
Our world had not yet been corrupted
with connections interrupted
with wireless servers on the blink,
for we needed no further link
than friends pounding upon our door
to come outside and play some more!
Stylish cowboys Karen Bossart and sister Patti.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
You brought it all back–so much fun.
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I could probably still be lured into a twilight game of hide n’ seek 🙂
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Me too. Why don’t adults ever play these games? I guess in Britain they used to…The one where one person would hide and when they were found, the person who found them would crowd in with them. More and more as the bame progressed until everyone was in one confined space with just one person left looking for them.
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Oh, Judy! This was wonderful! Those were the days. What ever happened to childhood?
Thanks for the memories! I’ll see you in September. Love you! Karen
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Wow… That brought back a lot of memories.
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Did you play all of those? I’ve never met anyone else who played New Orleans. My sister and I were tryng to remember what happened after the “it” person droped the button into your hand. Wikipedia just says that everyone tries to guess who has it and the one who does then gets to be “it.” That doesnt sound very exciting, though. I thought there was some chasing involved, but perhaps I’m confusing it with “Drop the Handkerchief.” Charmingly naive names for these games, as were the rules. But what fun they were. In the winter, Fox fox Goose.
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Those were all wonderful days. I used to play many games that you mentioned above at my childhood during those years of 1950s and 60s. We miss all this happiness now.
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I still see little girls here playing jumprope and I hope they construct ditties to jump to similar to the charming ones my friend’s little girl recited for me once.
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Button button was fun. It took great talent and a poker face to be able to drop the button into someone’s hand without the other players being able to guess. You have fabulous photos
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And remember “Poor Pussy?” Did you play it? Another game that demanded facial control and maneuvering.
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I don’t remember playing Poor Pussy. I loved your poem. I really enjoy your poetry style. It just roles off the tongue so smoothly, and they’really fun.
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Thanks, Mary. My poetry group doesn’t quite know what to make of my humorous rhymed stuff. They don’t want me to put any of it in our new anthology, which they say is intended for more “serious” poetry…But the rhymed humor cheers me up, too, when it decides to appear, so I keep welcoming it with open arms. I will describe Poor Pussy, Poor Pussy in a post.
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Thanks to sister Betty, at least for the first seven years of my life.Then I took over the role of family photographer, or Patti did when the photos were of me. I now take more photos in a week than we did in ten years back when it was a bit more work and a lot more money to get a photo.
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I have a question. I just wrote a blog that has 1500 words. Is that too long?
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Nope.. Is it up?
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not yet still editing, probably around 6
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Looking forward to it. Twiddling my thumbs.
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Billy said it needed some work, rushed to put this in. Kind of rambled didn’t I?
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Is the story about the women in your family the 1500 word story you were talking about? I enjoyed it. Didn’t seem rambling. I’d enjoy knowing who the people were in the photos, though.
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I’d like to write one along those lines, but the one I had Billy read is about all the storytellers in the family. I’m trying to keep it funny without too irreverent.
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Oh good. I was hoping there was another one as well.
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I’ll put the captions on first thing in the morning. I ran out of time.
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I longed for the simpler world, before Internet and real danger lurked. Tonight I cried. Cyberspace became a stranger, now I feel like a two faced jerk. Truly Judy.. I love the way you tell it like it is or was.
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oxoxo
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Adorable – and what precious memories!
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Those were the days! (K)
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Pingback: At Play: NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 16 | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown
How I loved those parties. Simple by comparison to the bashes thrown by parents today. Imagine our mothers ironing all those cotton ruffled dresses!
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We were the lucky ones. I cannot imagine how it must be a child these days. Even though I saw in Leya’s most recent post just earlier that in Bhutan children are not interested in cell phones at all. It gave me hope.
This prompt made me play with meter and rhyme and I’m afraid I did a sonnet. 😀 There are also many green pictures to calm the eyes. But you must have it too, the awakening of the spring.
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