Games you made up as a kid

[Buff]

My friend and I took an ice cream bucket full of 2" nails and would fill one or two or three nails into a hollow tube (about 16" long) and whip them out of the tube. His mom flipped when she came into the backyard and the side of the garage looked like one of those needle beds (can't think of the proper name).

Another time we took clumps of dirt and tried to see who could throw them farthest down the road... the nicely paved road looked like a side country dirt road, unfortunately we were caught as we were throwing our last clumps of dirt and had to sweep up the mess.

We also used to climb up onto the roof of my shed, jump across to my neighbours shed, pull the shingles off and throw them. We never got caught doing this one, but we broke 3 car windows and several times we hit or scared a dog in a backyard about 3 houses away.

I did have a really lame game that I played. I had about 3 or 4 dozen elastic bands of various shapes and sizes and I would shoot them at a wall and see which ones I could get to rebound the farthest.

[zukes]

Chicken Fights for sure

Foot hockey. Goalies got to use field hockey sticks, coats as posts, full contact on the field at school. Tennis ball as a puck. Once we had fairly even teams, we would play best of 7 seven's where the game would start at recess and end at the end of lunch.

Mercy Fights. You interlock fingers and push and twist as hard as you can until the other person says, "mercy". I remember we had rankings and everything. The guy who was #1 had his arms twisted and hands pushed back so far for a whole lunch hour and was crying his eyes out but wouldn't say "mercy" because he liked being the champion. The other guy just finally gave up.

I made up a curling/shuffleboard game with my marbles. I would take different coloured marbles. Each team was a country. I would put a piece of masking tape on the floor at the other end of the hall and then roll the marbles down. The closest ones to the dot of masking tape got points. Of course I cheated like a *******. Canada always won and places that didn't have curling teams would suck and get smoked all the time. Japan sucked royally for some reason.

I only did the curling thing when I got bored with playing hockey card marble hockey. Man did the Flames ever win a lot of games in this. Basically my hockey cards would be sorted in to teams and the two doors at the end of the hall were the nets. Calgary always won, but after that it depended on which players I had from each team. And of course there were fights and brawls where I basically smashed the cards together like they were punching each other. I hated the Oilers and I had so many Gretzky cards I used decide which one to use by which one was in the best shape. What a waste of all the cards that I used to have.

[zukes]

sounds like the hockey card thing is popular. What a waste.

[Regulator75]

Played / invented many games in my youth.

None better than Hall Hockey.

In a hall or a long rumpus room, on your hands and knees using a tennis ball for a puck, you would shoot using your hand as a stick.
No pads or anything needed. Kinda like table / air hockey on the floor.

This was a one on one game, we would also have winner keeps playing (like pool) when we had 3 - 5 buddies over.

We would play for hours on end.

Mom would get angry, because my new jeans would have the knees totally faded after a couple games. Ahhh good times.

[shane_c]

Originally Posted by Regulator75

Played / invented many games in my youth.

None better than Hall Hockey.

In a hall or a long rumpus room, on your hands and knees using a tennis ball for a puck, you would shoot using your hand as a stick.
No pads or anything needed. Kinda like table / air hockey on the floor.

We played the same thing in our hallway. Except we used a sock folded up in a ball and wrapped in tape. Great fun.

[V]

Originally Posted by Regulator75

Played / invented many games in my youth.

None better than Hall Hockey.

In a hall or a long rumpus room, on your hands and knees using a tennis ball for a puck, you would shoot using your hand as a stick.
No pads or anything needed. Kinda like table / air hockey on the floor.

This was a one on one game, we would also have winner keeps playing (like pool) when we had 3 - 5 buddies over.

We would play for hours on end.

Mom would get angry, because my new jeans would have the knees totally faded after a couple games. Ahhh good times.

We played the same thing, except with those plastic bowling pins as our hockey sticks. We'd also play as many as 3 on 3 at times. I sure miss those days.

[JiriHrdina]

Every spring at my elementary school was 'marble season'.

Every kid would come with their bag of marbles. I, of course, kept mine in an old Crown Royal bag. I had a pile of cool marbles too.

A couple of specific memories.

A guy named Paul would hang out by a small hole he called "the pit". If you challenged him his first move was to throw his marble in the pit. If you threw your marble in after him, he woudl claim that you missed his marble and then he would just hit yours. ######.

Marbles eventually ended up being banned though. The most coveted marble was a "King Kong Steely" that one feller had. Of course all it was was a big steel ball bearing but none of us knew that.

Anyhoo I got one shot at the big steely but when you faced the guy that had it (ironically some kid named Mark Steel) you had to play him 4 v.1 or 5 v.1. Meaning he had to hit you but once, but you had to hit him 4 or 5 times. I hit him 3 times but on my third hit I rolled just inches away so he just rolled his marble into mine to win.

Got off track - so this kid finally got defeated by a kid named Doug. Huge moment on the playground. Everyone went nuts when he got the fifth hit in. But Mark wouldn't give up the King Kong Steelie. Just ran off with it. Anyhoo big fight ended up breaking out and the end result was that the principal came on the PA that afternoon and announced that marbles were banned from Beddington Heights Elementary.

A dark day indeed.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by Dominicwasalreadytaken

We played the same thing, except with those plastic bowling pins as our hockey sticks. We'd also play as many as 3 on 3 at times. I sure miss those days.

A whole thread could be devoted to the different ways Canadian kids played funny little games and called it "hockey". Even an indoor version of soccer with a plastic puck was "hockey" at my house.

My personal favorite was hockey with a squash raquet and a little blue rubber ball. My personal non-favorite was playing with those mini hockey sticks that would break in approximately 3 seconds. I must have gone through about 50 of those things and I never learned. They were really built for decoration (shabby decoration at that) and I was told to leave them on the wall but I couldn't help myself.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

A guy named Paul would hang out by a small hole he called "the pit".

Hmmm. This sounds kind of familiar.

Are you sure this was a real boy?

[Dion_Iggy_Kipper!!!]

A couple games I can remember:
1,2,3: the person who was "it" would turn around and count to 10, the other people, sometimes as many as 20, would run past them and hide on the big fort, then when "it" person was done counting, everyone would try to run back to the safe area. I can remember one time on the playground I slipped on the gravel and scraped up my elbow pretty bad. That was so much fun.

Chicken Fights on the monkey bars: Exept the bars at my school were really high, they were slanted and at the bottom, a grown man might be able to reach them. If I remember correctly our principal once put a large mat underneath them so we wouldn't get hurt.

Definatly played Hall Hockey: exept me and my brother used mini sticks and a tennis ball. Ah, the fun we had.

[Buff]

We used to play tennis in the street where we would play street hockey. We just tied a string to the bushes in somebodies yard, ran it across the street to somebodies bike. I remember that we once forgot to take the string down when we went inside for a break. We got side tracked and took longer than anticipated, but we did rush outside when we heard a vehicle's tires screeching on the street. The driver saw the string at the last minute and slammed on the breaks, not knowing what it was, boy did we get dirty looks when we came out to take down the string. We decided to pack it in, and noticed a couple hours later a cop car slowly driving by.

Then there was berry badmington. My friend and I would pick berries off of the bushes in his yard and hit them with badmington racquets. We wrecked a few racquets this way. Eventually my friend's dad questioned us about hitting berries into the neighbours yards. We lied and blamed it on his younger brothers and got away with it. I can't remember if they had to, but there was a threat of repainting the neighbours berry stained deck.

[Bill Bumface]

Since we are getting into dangerous games we played when we were younger, I'll throw in my favorite bumper shining story. One of our friends had his parents Chevy Lumina minivan (the SpaceVan it was called). The streets had been really snowy but a chinook and a refreeze had turned them into sheer ice on top of the snow. The SpaceVan driver shows up with some rope and a couple of kids sleds and we tie the rope to the hitch, two guys sit in the back with their legs hanging out the van with the tailgate up, one guy goes on the sled and holds on to the rope, and one guy drives.

We're having a great time and it comes up to be my turn. I hop on the sled, grab the rope, and we take off. We went into the back alleys and I'm getting pulled along and the driver gets going pretty quick... probably about 30km/h. I'm barely hanging on and the sled is bouncing all over the place. The driver is laughing so hard looking back at me as he whips around corners that he forgets to look ahead of him. Up ahead the alley intersected with a street. It was a steep down ramp to the street, then the crowned street and a steep up ramp back into the alley. I can't see this because I'm behind the van, the driver can't see it because he's looking backwards... and then BAM.

The hatch on the van closes, so they can no longer see me. I'm barely hanging on, twisted sideways and on my back on the sled and a car goes by right behind me on the street. They freak out because they can just see that a car came right after and have no idea where I am. I hit the ramp back into the alley just as the hatch bounces up. They see me go flying through the air and landing hard on my ass. I'd let go of the rope in the air but somehow the rope got me by the ankle and I was getting dragged by my leg behind the van. Finally my foot comes out and I slide to a stop with no shoe and no sled and a van of people laughing hysterically. The driver felt kind of bad that I was a couple feet from being hit by a car but decided it was funny enough that it was okay.

[Sylvanfan]

^^^
Ha ha ha,

Yeah a few years ago at Okanagan Lake I got this brilliant idea of flying a tube behind the boat like a kite. My boss who was driving the boat thought this was amusing too and decided to up the speed. Of course the tow rope for the tube, is a pretty fine Nylon and started to slip. Not wanting to get rope burn on my hands I immediately let go. Unfortunately the pile of rope at my feet wrapped around my leg, and flung me out of the boat. I was luckey that it didn't wrap right around my leg and drag me or anything, but I had a real nasty scar on the back of my leg, and another good one on my chest from landing on the rope as I entered the water. The other luckey thing for me was that just minutes before I'd taken my keys and wallet out of my pocket, and taken off my sunglasses. Certainly I would have lost all of my artifacts with my sudden extraction from the boat too.

Yes there is a reason why woman have a longer life expectancy than us men. How many times has a girl, or woman said to her friends. Hey check this out.

[Displaced Flames fan]

For a period of time, say 3rd and 4th grade, much of my freetime was consumed with trying to jump my bicycle (and my cousin was in on this too) as far as humanly possible. We'd measure our jumps and record them for all of history. The ramps were at first dirt mounds that most of the kids in the neighborhood used for the same purpose. That wasn't enough. Soon we were building ramps that we had no business building and jumping our bikes off of them.

One of my fondest memories of all time was doing this very thing. My cousin (who was more like my brother and passed away a few years back) took a particularly miraculous jump off of one of our mammoth ramps and had a massive wipeout. Being 9 or so he was laying there writhing in pain and crying.....then he suddenly came to his senses, instantly ceased his bawling and popped his head up and said...."Did I beat my mark?"

I will probably never laugh like that again.

We were obsessed little daredevils though. My bike actually broke from the abuse, cracked the frame!

[Displaced Flames fan]

My Dad swears that when he was 12 or so he and a bunch of friends played 'cowboys and indians' on horseback and with .22's.

I'm not sure I believe him.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Sparks

We called that one Bums Up - I remember playing that one a lot during recess.

We started playing that game around 1979. My buddy claimed to be the one who brought it to Calgary. We always thought he was BSing.

According to the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butts_Up , it was started in the 80s or earlier, so maybe he wasn't so full of it! Anyone remember playing earlier?

[return to the red]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Hmmm. This sounds kind of familiar.

Are you sure this was a real boy?

LMAO

Hall hockey I still play with my buddies when we get together, got to use the ministicks though.

Marbles was a big thing back in the day and I actually found my marbles the other day when my parents were cleaning out their storage

dirt bomb wars were always hazardous but a gooder

and we always played war games in houses under contsruction when it got dark, we would dress in black and run through the houses trying to hit each other with sticks

[flamesrule14]

This brings back some fun memories. In our neighborhood one game we played was bicrosse. We played in someone's backyard with lacrosse sticks and a birdie and tryed to score on the other teams net. We played with full contact and every game always seemed to end with two people fighting.

Another game I played when I was younger was either hand hockey or hockey with those mini sticks down in our basement. We'd get friends over and have tournaments. Man we broke so many things with the ball and the walls were completely banged up. Even sometimes I remember we would play at school during lunch and recess when the weather was bad.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Track tag was always a playground favorite in the winter. Stamp out a bunch of connecting paths in the fresh snow and play tag normally, but you can't step off the paths.

[Sylvanfan]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

My Dad swears that when he was 12 or so he and a bunch of friends played 'cowboys and indians' on horseback and with .22's.

I'm not sure I believe him.

Well if they did....thats the ultimate danger game . My dad and his 9 brothers used to stage horse chases, but I don't think they brought out the guns. Although he did have a story about his one brother rolling the horse cairrage and trying to blame the other nine.