Life certainly has its share of
unexpected pleasant surprises. For example, the other day Tim and I were
sitting on the porch and reminiscing about the elementary school games we used
to play indoors. We talked about Red Rover (played in the gym of course) and 7
Up which was played in our classrooms. One of the high school kids I hired to
clean my horse stalls (The degenerative arthritis in my shoulders has been
sending me malicious messages lately) finished up and came up to the porch to be
paid. I asked him if they ever played Red Rover and 7 Up when he was in
elementary school, tacitly assuring myself that he no doubt would have ever
heard of these school games. To my astonishment, he said they played those same
games in school too! I certainly never expected that those same games Tim and I
played in the 1950's are still being played! BOING!
Whoa! Hey! Wait just a second. The 1950's! Oh my goodness, that was over a half
century ago! As I have said repeatedly, I'm not growing old gracefully! On the
other hand, I don't feel that old and I certainly don't act it!
I recalled that we first played 7 Up in
the 3rd grade and I'm sure we continued after that. The game was played with 7
classmates standing in front of the class. The rest put their heads down on their
desks. The 7 then moved around the room and each touched 7 of us. After being touched,
we stuck our thumb up. The 7 touchers went back to the front of the class and
shouted, "Heads up 7 UP"! Each
one who was touched, i.e. the "touchees"
got 1 guess as to which of the 7 touched them. All those who guessed correctly
got to stand in front of the class and the other one(s) had to go back to their
desks. The cycle then started all over again.
After 52 years, I have a confession to
make. Now it can be told! I used to peek at the shoes of each one that touched
me through a small gap I made under my arm while my head was down and consequently
always won. Well, there you have it. Alas, confession is good for the soul. I
imagine all the other kids including the teacher must have thought that I was
psychic. Actually, I was psychotic! You
know, as I think back, I was an insidious little kid wasn't I.
Whenever I put my head down on my desk,
I would always lick the top. It always tasted like pencil lead. Why did I always
do that you ask? Hey, it beats the heck out of me. I guess I found tactile
delight with some aspects of school.
We guys used to play several
"unauthorized" inside the classroom games when the teacher wasn't
around. Eraser fights were a favorite event. Some of our games weren't always
innocuous. We used to have pencil fights and stab each other with the point.
This resulted in permanent "tattoos". I have a few. In the picture
below is one from the 7th grade when Dennis Ray stabbed me in the
hand. I also have one on my right knee. However, at the moment I don't feel
like rolling up the right leg of my tight blue jeans to take a picture of it. Besides,
I wouldn't want to drive you lady fans wild. (Hey, I told you I was psychotic
and not psychic.)
Spit wad fights were also among the
"unauthorized" indoor school games. You would be surprised how much
velocity spit wads can attain shooting them with a wooden ruler. The ceilings
of our classrooms were dotted with dried out spit wads made from notebook paper.
Now I shall come to the most sinister sadistic
indoor school game ever devised. This past time was no doubt invented by some
Hitler aspiring kid. I am referring to the infamous and dreaded "Bobby Pin
Snapper". If any of you have ever been the victim of a "Bobby Pin
Snapper", you will not soon forget it! They inflicted much pain. In fact,
thinking back, they should have passed a bill in Congress outlawing Bobby pins.
To construct one of these we bent the straight side of a Bobby pin out and up
over the top and toward the back. We then kept going until it formed a double
loop and hooked the tip behind the crimped side of the Bobby pin. We then walked
around very clandestinely and stalked an unsuspecting victim. When the snapper
was pressed against the body, the spring-loaded part snapped against it with
great force. The result was very acute pain resulting in a white welt surrounded
by red flesh. Fortunately, by the grace of God, these were only constructed and
used at school. I would like to make one now just for old times sake, but I cannot
find any Bobby pins around here. I hesitate to go buy some, since being a guy,
people might talk. I could claim they are for my wife, but they know that with
her very long straight hair, that she doesn't use Bobby pins. Maybe one of you
lady fans can buy some for me and give them to me! On the other hand, I wonder
if they still make Bobby pins these days. If they do, they are more than likely
made of cheap plastic produced in some Communist Chinese sweatshop assembly
line. Many things we had laying around when we were kids are very hard if not
impossible to find these days. A case in point, has anyone of you tried to find
the one-piece slip on wooden clothespins these days?
Another neat thing we used to do at
school was to make a paper "snapper". I sure wish I could remember
how to do it. The only thing I recall is that a piece of notebook paper was
folded into a triangle and when it was flicked by the arm and wrist, it would
make a loud popping sound. Hey if any of you, my beloved fans, remember how to
make these please let me know! After an exhaustive Google web search, I turned
up nothing. Surely, someone must remember!
I wonder if school kids still pass notes
in class these days like we all used to. On second thought, they don't need to
since they can just send text messages to each other on their cell phones in
class or better yet "study" hall. Speaking of cell phone text
messages, I suspect that is the reason why young people today communicate typed
messages in all lower case letters. Good grief, does that ever bug me! Whenever
I get an email or a posting on one of the news groups I moderate in all lower
case letters with little or no punctuation, it just irritates the daylights out
of me. When I'm really "running hot" I've been known to delete them before
I even finish reading them. I certainly don't want to get off on another one of
my famous "sidetracks" of the things that irritate me these days. Well,
please allow me to insert just one of hundreds of my Pet Peeves that is
presently germane. This time of year fruits and vegetables are starting to get
ripe. Please! never refer to vegetables as
"veggies" within my hearing range! All these current trends really...
Whoops, I won't elaborate any further at this time. In the future, I am
entertaining the thought of listing several of my Pet Peeves and inviting all
of you, my beloved fans, to do the same. I think it would be fun to compare
notes, don't you? Since many of us are about the same age, I think we will find
it most interesting. Well, at this time I'm going out to the field to find some
ripe tomatoes and other VEGETABLES for supper. J
