Игры нашего двора

Games in our yard

We already remembered what we played in childhood, but those were word games, and now let’s go back to the courtyards of the example of thirty years (a nightmare!) ago... With sports and role-playing games, everything is clear: dodgeball, badminton, daughters and mothers, Cossack robbers. But there were a number of games that miraculously combined sports and linguistic components. The first thing that comes to mind is the Edible-Inedible ball game, a cool, fun and simple game for all ages.

The whole honest company danced and simply jerked to the words of the presenter: “The sea is worried once, the sea is worried two, the sea is worried three, sea figure, freeze in place!” Next came the name of the sea animal in the pose of which you need to freeze, and everyone considered it their duty not only to bend over like a seahorse, for example, but also to make the most stupid grimace possible in order to amuse their comrades. And the presenter then chose who was the first in beauty.  

Another game with freezing in a ridiculous position: the leader stood facing the wall, and the rest lined up behind him in a line about 20 meters away. The presenter shouted “The car was moving, driving!”, and everyone rushed to race to be the first to reach the wall while the water was not looking. "Stop!" the presenter shouted and turned around. Here you had to freeze and not move, otherwise you’d be eliminated. While the presenter is examining and firing at the participants for the slightest movement, you could rush to the wall, touch it, and here it is, victory!

“Boyars, we came to you, young people, and we came to you!” one team sang, holding hands and walking towards the other team. “Boyars, why did you come? Young people, why did you come?” - the second one retorted. Then the evening ceased to be languid, for we were talking about matchmaking. The first chose the bride, the second did not really want to give her away, there were strictly regulated chants for everything. It all ended with the chosen one running away and trying to break the chain on the opposing team. If she succeeded, she returned to her family, taking someone with her. If not, she stayed in someone else's family. The goal of the game is to recruit as many players as possible into your team. How many knees and palms were broken by brides eager for battle!

Before going out for a walk, it was advisable to choose a brighter outfit in case of playing “Traffic Light”. The presenter turns away from the other participants and names any color. If your suit has one, feel free to go through; if not, you’ll have to fight your way through. WATER played around as best he could, inventing the names of colors, and everyone was looking for at least a thread of the right shade. You could use a life hack - put some bright candy wrapper in your pocket and feel like a rainbow unicorn.

And, of course, rubber band, the favorite game of Soviet girls, which in fact, as I found out while writing this post, comes from Asia. Thanks to the Chinese for our happy childhood, I don’t even know what we would have done without the “dirt”! Now it’s hard for me to imagine how you can skip the whole walk, but then I was so excited about it that when I returned home, I pulled the rubber band between the chairs and continued to jump. Did everyone do this? Who remembers what the combinations were called? I remember there were “Simple”, “Bows”, “Pedestrians”. And now I haven’t seen girls jumping for a long time. The technology is probably lost.

We also played with a rubber band and played with cobwebs. Two people with some unintelligible sentence: “Olympics, mom’s lipstick, dad’s panties, one-two-three!” They tangled the rubber band with their hands and feet, and the third one got through.

I am writing this post while sitting on the playground and watching how modern children are having fun. I conclude that children's transport has replaced everything else: everyone rides scooters, balance bikes, bikes, and hoverboards. Games are picking up speed!


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