By Joe Rector
I ran across a new comedian on YouTube. His schtick covered games children played years ago. That fired my memories about those things that we used to do for fun or amusement back in my childhood. Some of those activities were absurd, while others were downright dangerous. The fact that we survived them is a miracle.
Most of our games were played outside. They involved certain levels of personal pain. One involved taking turns smacking each other on the underside of the forearms. Players would lick their index and middle fingers; then they would make contact with those forearms in a whipping type of motion. Players took turns striking each other until welts appeared. The loser was the player who “cried uncle” and ended the game. The winner received nothing more than bragging rights.
A similar game was played by punching another’s upper arm. This occurred when two persons said the same thing. The first one to utter, “Jinks,” was allowed to hit the other. In another version, one player would draw attention to the “okay” symbol he’d made with his fingers. If the person looked at the symbol, his opponent could hit him on the arm. The key was to wipe the arm with the hand after punching. Not doing this gave license to the other person to return the punch. If the person saw the symbol and could stick a finger inside the “O” formed by the hand, he became the puncher.
I’ve seen some males armwrestling on top of desks. Wiry-built teens could sometimes defeat muscle-bound opponents, but most of the time, the bigger guy won the match. I have also watched as one teen’s forearm snapped during a contest.
As goofy teenagers, we always were finding ways to pinch, twist, and backhand parts of our buddies’ bodies. Times were especially dangerous for those boys who failed to keep their heads on a swivel to detect friends who meant them harm.
One dangerous thing we did was pop another’s back. A strong guy would stand behind a person and pick him up. While holding him, the boy would suddenly lift up and then down. The ensuing sounds of cracking backs sent shivers through those who watched. It’s possible that those back-breaking games contributed to the bad backs with which we had to deal in later years.
My brother Jim and I decided to play a game of stretch one summer. One of us would toss a pocketknife toward the ground that was supposed to stick in the ground. Then we would have had to step to the place where the knife was located. If the knife didn’t stick in the ground, the thrower would lose his turn. We played several games, and when they ended, Jim and I both reached for the knife. He got there first; my right wrist arrived a spilt second later. I looked at it and saw a gash. Our game had turned into one that ended in stitches and a loss of summer activities for several weeks.
We boys did plenty of dumb and dangerous things during those summers. The summer vacations included stitches, abrasions, bruises, and bug bites. We had no air conditioning, so the yard, the woods, or the fields were cooler places to spend time. Under the shade of a giant water maple is where we played many of those games. Today’s children will never have the same dangers because most of them stay inside as they play on game systems or computers. Too many of them couldn’t play outside because their homes were built on postage-stamp-sized lots with minimal green space. Yes, today’s children are much safer, but they have fewer adventures and not near as much social interaction. I’ll take the old days with stitches.
