“Not-it...Not-it... Not-it...”
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Almost before we got out of the door at recess, we sang out the ritual start of our games of chase. It may have been “tag” to most of the rest of the world, but to us it was “chase.”
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“I called not-it.”
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“No, you didn’t.”
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And on and on it went until someone accepted the fact that he was indeed “it.”
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”Only one person ‘on base’ at a time” and other rules were subject to modification in mid-game, depending on who could gather the most support and who could yell the loudest. A game of chase could last an entire recess, even if it weren’t for the inevitable arguing that might suspend the game at any point.
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Chase was the most common game we played at recess, but sometimes we played a game we called "rough house," and rough it was. In this every-man-for-himself version of football, scraped knees and tears were the norm. The game began with someone punting a football into a crowd of everyone else. The person who came down with the ball took off running in the direction of the designated goal line while everyone else tried to tackle him. After he was brought down, he turned with his back to the masses and threw the ball over his head and the chaos continued. Small, quick guys might stay upright for a while by bobbing and weaving through the throng. Or sometimes a really big guy would move the ball forward with smaller guys dangling from his shoulders, waist and legs. Nobody made textbook tackles in this form of disorganized mayhem. Instead, the common practice was to stick out a foot and trip the unwary runner as he went by the tripper. I’m not sure how we avoided serious injury in such a game.
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When we came in from recess, our classrooms were not air conditioned, so the teacher would urge us to be still and put our heads down on our desks while she read a story to us, shouting above the noise of several ineffective box fans that merely stirred the hot air. I still remember how sweaty arms stuck to a desktop when we were finally told we could raise our heads.
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ok - caye and molly giving the girls' side of recess...
ReplyDeletejump rope!!! and chanting until you reached "hot peas" when the rope went double time.
at church street, there was always a line for the "giant stride". a merry go round of sorts that consisted of metal trapeze bars that you hung on to for dear life as you circled the center pole. as the speed increased and centrifugal force took over, kids would lose their grip and streak across the sky, then thud upon the ground.
where were the ambulance chasin' lawyers back then???
then the swings. church street had the little kids swings and then there were the monster swings where you could scrape the sky.
we had a may pole on may 1. how about joyner? rankin? lawhon?
Joyner- I remember playing "chase". There was a guy in our grade no one played with. I felt sorry for him and decided to chase him because he was so left out. BIG MISTAKE-- He came to my house thinking I liked him. Mother laughed at me 'cause I didn't know how to get rid of him and tried pushing on the backdoor so he would get off the steps & go home. I just wanted to be "nice" on my terms! (silly story!)
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