I grew up on a dead end street with no guys to play with that were my age…or at all for that matter.  My nearest sibling was 4 years older and…a girl.  My only brother was ten years older than me and although intellectually my inferior (he doesn’t visit my site so I enjoy taking that liberty) he was socially into other things that, well, weren’t me (namely his lovely girlfriend who is now his wonderful wife).  My dad was at work, my mother was always doing laundry cleaning the floors (who does that?), dishes, shopping, etc.  Thus, if I wanted to play I had  to use my…imagination.

Look, we all grew up in the worst of times.  Just ask our kids.  We tell them all of the time.  We were told to go outside, we weren’t played with.  We drank out of the hose if we were thirsty.  “Be home by dinner” was the directive.  No video games, no cell phones, no video on demand or 1500 channels to choose from.  The list goes on.  It’s a wonder we didn’t die of boredom.

I remember all of the many games I made up to pass my summer months.  Some were awesome.  Some were tragically sad (playing tag versus the wind).   All of them took a moment or two of deep thought and a lot of refining.  However, I would love to go back and play each one again.

There were the simple ones.  Our front yard was divided 1/3 to 2/3 by our drive way which was elevated and sloping down toward the house (the yard was a good 4′ below the street level.  I would cut the grass (gasp…chores!) a little lower and chip golf balls from one side to other.  If I mishit it I’d lose the ball over the hill.  If I was daring I’d move the ball closer to the wall that framed the driveway.  If I didn’t pop the ball up just right I got it right back in my face…or worse.  I would also take the benches from the picnic table, stand them on either end of the table itself and have a make shift field goal post.  I would then kick field goals until I invariable lost all of the balls (or broke the benches “I have no idea how THAT happened dad”).  I would skate board down our street.  It was one good sized hill and our house was at the bottom.  I would try to see how far up the hill I could start from and not wipe out from the speed.  Mind you, it wasn’t one of these $200 super wide 400 ball bearing no talent boards of today.  It was yellow plastic wide enough, barely, to stand on (yes, I know, for  some of you a bit more aged than I used scooter bottoms made of wood and used walnuts for wheels…I get it).

There were all of the different things one could do on a bike.  The simplest being, well, go and ride it.  I would go up to Forbes Elementary which had some trails in the back that felt like I was in a far away forest.  Coming out of the woods I remember a ramp type mound of dirt that I dared try once…once.  I lost a tooth and half of my ability to reproduce to the cross bars that day (not literally but it was the one risk I never tried twice after failing the first time).  I would go up and down my street endless times.  Occasionally, I would put on my skate board helmet (I never wore it to skate board and bicycle helmets were not invented yet…much as I knew) and try to jump my bike off the curb, over my neighbors wall and into his yard below.  I never made it but knew by then to just throw the bike and bail.  Let’s not forget about the endless hours trying to pop the perfect wheelie that eventually stripped the handle bars to the point where they kept basically no form.

Then, there were the games that really dipped into my creativity and imagination.  One such have was basically a “By yourself baseball game.”  We had a stone wall that framed our front yard.  I would pitch my ball which was a rubber/cork type ball from the local pharmacy (Sycamore…for you local folks) against said wall.  When it came back on the ground I would have to field it and throw it again off the wall and cleanly catch it again for the “batter” to be out.  If it came back to me in the air I just had to catch it for the out.  If it got past me on the ground it was a single.  In the air, a double.  On to the porch a triple and off of the house (even the big living room window) a home run.  I would have 9 inning games with the line up for the Pirates (circa 1979) vs. the hated Phillies.  I would pitch for both teams and wouldn’t you know it, the Pirates won every time.

Possibly the one thing I did more and more as I got older (along with chipping the golf balls) was to practice volleyball with the roof of our house.  I would serve the ball onto the roof, forearm pass it when it came down, do it again except this time setting it, and then off of the bounce from the set I would overhand hit a roll shot back onto the roof and repeat.  If I ever hit it too hard it went over the house and into the woods (producing some “jagger bush” searching that was never  fun.

Things are different now.  Joe twirls a stick around pretending to be a Power Ranger, Bella asks me to play “tickle monster”, and Trey begs me to play blanket (poor man’s parachute games).  I think this summer is going to be the, “I’ll give you a dollar for every game you make up on your own that you can play on your own” experiment.  I’ll let you know how that goes…