I was having a very hard time thinking of anything to write about on this rather errandy day. I glanced through a few lists of prompts, most of which did not inspire me, but I did see one on playgrounds. Since I've also been busily cataloguing my library over on Library Thing and noticed that I have a fair number of books about jump rope rhymes and playground games and such, it's as good a subject as any.
There was some little local playground quite near where we lived, but I cannot for the life of me remember exactly where it was. I am reasonably sure it no longer exists. Given the way suburbia grows, it was inevitably swallowed up for housing. I think it had just a few swings and a sliding pond (New York for what other people call a slide) and what we called a merry-go-round. The latter was basically a turntable, with metal handles separating pie shaped red and yellow wedges. You put one foot on the turntable, held on a handle and worked it like a scooter until it was going fast. Then everybody lifted the scooter foot on and just glided around.
There was a somewhat more elaborate playground at Point Lookout, where we went on an annual school picnic. I think it had two sliding ponds and a few seesaws and more swings. The more memorable one was at Oceanside Park, where the sliding pond was shaped like a rocket. One or more of these also had monkey bars, but the monkey bars I remember most were at school.
Very little of our playing was done at playgrounds, though. We pretty much played either in empty lots (i.e. overgrown plots of weeds that later had houses put on them) or in the street or just in our front yards. We rode bikes (which we decorated with baseball cards attached with clothes pins) and played softball, but many of the games we played required little to no equipment. With just a ball, you could play stoopball (which, of course, was scored like baseball, with action determined by the rebound of the ball off the steps). Or Russia, which involved tossing a ball in the air and doing various tricks before you caught it. The most popular ball game was probably Monkey in the Middle, which was essentially a game of catch, with a person in the middle of the thrower and catcher who tried to intercept the ball and take the thrower's place.
You didn't need anything at all to play games like Mother, May I or Red Light Green Light 1 - 2- 3, or infinite variations of tag.
There were also ball bouncing games with elaborate verses ("A my name is Alice, my husband's name is Alan, we live in Albany, and we sell apples"). And, of course, jump rope rhymes. I distinctly remember one used for jumping in that went "A penny, a quarter, a nickel and a dime, A starts the alphabet, be on time." You had to have jumped in by the end of that and then it ran through the alphabet until you missed.
Our biggest street game obsession didn't take hold until around junior high, though. The summers were filled with hopscotch. This had something to do with the nightclub across the highway and the sleazy record company (Breakout Management) at the corner of the block and our attempts to get the attention of rock musicians who had the sense not to have anything to do with 13 year old girls.
People say we live in more complicated, more structured times now. But I still see the children in my neighborhood playing the same sorts of games we did. They use a slightly different layout for hopscotch than we did (and there are no rock musicians to try to catch the eye of), but all of the organized activities in the world haven't stopped kids from just playing.
I haven't seen a red and yellow merry-go-round at the local park, though.
Copyright 2007 Miriam H. Nadel