Canals in Fresno?
She says, blinking...
Marbles. We were big on that when I was about in the second grade. Mostly we played the circle thing that Edgar described: everyone put in a few and then we would take turns trying to knock them out. We played "keepsies," meaning that ownership of the marbles changed hands. Things went fine until the nuns found out about that part of the game and we got shut down. I don't know who the tattle-tale was. Not johnboy, I had a huge collection of marbles and I developed a good hand-eye coordination that served me well in college at the pool-hall across the street from my dorm, where I spent far more time than I should have.
Once, when we were on the playground at St Rita's during my second grade, a small man in a shiny, ill-fitting suit came up to us. An old-guy, perhaps Jewish, and he introduced us to the yo-yo. He could stand six feet away from one of us, get us to pull open the breast pocket on our shirts and he could land that yo-yo in our pocket. He was good and he kept up a banter as he did other tricks that absolutely mesmerized us. He sold a bunch of yo-yo's for 50 cents each and left before the nuns discovered that we were hungry but had no lunch money. We practiced for the remaining few months of the school year but none of us ever got any good at the yo-yo.
We muddled along for a few more years and then discovered that girls weren't as yucky as we had thought they were. And that's when the real trouble started... --rjb-
RJB - wow, that is a cool story! I remember trying and trying to be good at the yo-yo, to no avail. But, I could roller skate!
Ohhh! littlek, you must be about my age...I was the rollerskating dancing queen. Rollerskating each and every Friday night and all day on Saturdays consumed my entire 4th-6th grade. Abba's "Dancing Queen" was my favorite song to skate to. We called it the "Skate Ranch." We had races and also did the hokey pokey.
By the time we had "come of age" in 7th grade, is was on to bigger arenas...Astroworld. Every Saturday was spent here riding the rides and looking for guys.
Billy Idol gave a rockin' concert on the lawn one year.
Do you remember the first party you ever went to where (from rjb's perspective) you were going to get to/have to actually dance with a girl?
I was 13 in 1959 so rock and roll hadn't really been invented so when a boy and girl danced they actually had to touch each other, awkwardly, sweaty hand to sweaty hand.
The school that we all went to didn't sponsor an event like that. Instead some parents rented a hall for all of the kids. The parents sat at tables on the fringes of the room, discreetly spiking their drinks with booze from flasks.
And all of the boys stood on one side of the room, preening, and all of the girls stood on the other side, preening, listening to the 45's until finally, finally, one of the guys was goaded into crossing that great divide between boy and girl and asked for a dance.
Boy that brings back some memories...circa 1963.Ours were held at the elementary school. They were called social dances. I went for the KK doughnuts...the girls terrified me.
I didn't actually go to any dances after the one in 8th grade. My friends were all drunk and some were throwing up. Lovely.
oh such wonderful stories my friends!! when i was a boy i remember we always hated this old sheik we knew. sheik hamad used to tell our parents every little thing we did wrong around the village and so a group of us stole our fathers ak-47s and snuck onto his grazing land in the middle of night and blasted away half his flock, such great fun we had....
and of course i could never forget another game we used to play. we called it "grenades in the hay, better move your ass!" ......of course this rhymes in arabic..
Of course it does... But in Oxnard it's still "grenades in the hay, better move your ass!"
I was thirteen in 1955, and that was right around when rock and roll was invented, though not of course the sources from which it derived. I lived in a suburb of Chicago, went to a Catholic grade school, and boy were we all interested. I might be a different person if we hadn't moved. I knew all the latest dances; while not the first person to know them, I was in on learning them, ack, it was a lively time. I was catapulted to Los Angeles, where I didn't know anybody and went to a girls' school for high school, and lived fairly far from it on top of everything. Lost touch, shall we say, with what was happening. Thought of myself as clumsy. Still, that was a great time to be 13.
In fourth grade, my little girlfriends and I decided it would be fun to taunt the boys playing baseball during recess and then run away giggling. We called them all sorts of names..."Stinky"..."Clumsy"...and more I can't remember. Finally one of them (the team captain) had enough, turned around, spotted me, and started chasing me. I was thrilled but scared, because I knew he was really mad.
There was a reason they made him team captain. He was a very fast runner. He got close enough to push me down when we got over by the teeter-totters (see-saws) on the gravel. I landed on one hand which twisted sideways under the weight of my body. Several days later my arm was still red, swollen and painful to the touch, so I had to go to the doctor. Dr. Robertson called it a "greenstick break"...apparently the bones are still so rubbery at that age that they don't break, they just bend. He sent me to the hospital, where I had to go under general anesthesia to reset the bone and put a cast on my arm.
Oh boy, did I play the martyr then! I couldn't wait to get back to school to show off my cast and make that boy feel horribly guilty for the dramatic ordeal he had put me through, but guess what? He expressed absolutely no remorse. That really took all the fun out of it. Besides, all the fourth-graders started bowling lessons the next week, and I was not excused because of the cast on my arm. So I had to learn how to bowl one-handed. Talk about clumsy. He really laughed at me then. So did all his teammates.
I never forgave him. <sniff> Wherever you are today, "Stinky," I still hate you. So there.
Confession is good for the soul...
Great story, eva. Thanks.
Wintertime in N Virginia was sled time. The first flakes of snow and I was waxing runners. I lived at the top of a very steep hill and as soon as I heard snow tires spinning I was out the door.
Now the finest sled was made by Flexible Flyer. Hands down. I could never seem to get one under the Christmas tree...mine was the Western Auto clunker model...stiff and slow.
The whole reason for living when you were going down the hill was to wait til someone crossed in front of you and you grabbed their runner, tugged sideways and KABOOM...they rolled off into the gutter
I was often the rollee..if I'd had a FF I'da been the roller.
Abu Ishaq Al Juwayri wrote:oh such wonderful stories my friends!! when i was a boy i remember we always hated this old sheik we knew. sheik hamad used to tell our parents every little thing we did wrong around the village and so a group of us stole our fathers ak-47s and snuck onto his grazing land in the middle of night and blasted away half his flock, such great fun we had....
and of course i could never forget another game we used to play. we called it "grenades in the hay, better move your ass!" ......of course this rhymes in arabic..
I thought I recognized you. Now I know why we moved.
