The lovely Kate from Kate Takes 5 is encouraging us to relive our youth this week and remember some of the games we used to play. A couple of them came to mind immediately but others took a little head scratching before they surfaced. Nothing like a trip down memory lane to make you feel a bit old. I am sure once I hit publish I will think of an absolute doozy, but this is what I have put together.
Grocery Store/Video Stores
Mum has two fold out corner cupboards in her kitchen that when positioned just so could be made to look just like a little store cart. One of the cupboards served as mum’s pantry and other other held all the pots and pans. My brother and I spent hours pretending to serve customers and discussing how busy our respective businesses were that day. It saved mum and dad trying to find the money and space for some garish play kitchen and for some reason it never occurred to us to move any of the stock beyond the store front so there was little clean up. Being the eldest meant that my brother was the one that had to run the pots and pans store.
Murder in the Dark
Basically hide and seek in the dark. Someone would have to wait outside a room while the others hid in the dark. After counting to 20 they would enter the room and proceed to search for the people hiding.
Popstar
Please tell me someone else remembers this game??? You and your opponent would stand facing each other roughly 4-5 metres apart with a half way marker of some sort (the squares of concrete in the school walkways seemed to work best) one person would call out the name of a song and the other would have to name the artist. Once the artist was guessed correctly both would run to their opposite side, return to their original end and then back to the middle line, the first to reach the line and call out "Popstar” won and got to lead the next round. I recall spending the better part of Year 3 and 4 playing this game in my little and big lunches.
Handball
This one carried on well into High School, played in pairs, round robins or quads this pretty much signalled the death of “Popstar”. Best described as human table tennis on concrete squares for court markers.
My Lounge Room’s Got Talent
I doubt very much we called it that at the time but one of the older ladies that lived down the road had a granddaughter about my age and we would spend many weekends dressing up in the clothes that were stored in the spare room and staging performance mime to the latest Top 40 hits and being critiqued on our skills. I can distinctly remember Transvision Vamp “I Want Your Love” being a favourite, possibly because I desperately wanted pink lipstick. Even the guy second from the right is a little freaked out by Mr Far Right and his pants holding…
