Cops & Robbers
My brother, who was my best friend growing up, and I would ride our bikes everywhere. Obviously that can become a little boring after awhile, so we took our love for riding and injected a little imagination into it to come up with our version of Cops & Robbers. It was a role-playing game, in which one would be a cop, the other a robber. Our "high-speed" chase took place on our long driveway. To make it fair, the robber had about five or ten seconds of getaway time. However I really dreaded when I would be the robber for the simple fact that my brother really knew how to commit. I think there were moments that he thought he was a cop. He would jump off his bike and tackle me to the ground, while twisting my arm around my back (painfully I might add), all the while he would be yelling at me to "calm down" and I was "under arrest." I was generally scared for my life! But that adrenaline rush made it so much more entertaining. It was like a mini version of "Cops."
Lava Floor (or Shark Infested Waters)
On the days it would rain, our imaginations were really put to the test. We didn't have the outside to work with, just confined inside the house. As a result we would play a game called Lava Floor, or Shark Infested Waters, depending on the day. It was a simple game that could be played throughout the house, room to room. The rules were simple: Don't step on the floor! You can use the couch, coffee table, throw pillows on the floor, or any other inanimate object, as long as your body didn't touch the floor. Of course we imagined that the entire floor was covered in lava, or full of sharks. If a part of your body hit the ground...you lost it! So you would have to hobble around on one leg. It got really interesting trying to move from the living room to your room and to the bathroom. Of course our mother always told us "She was dead" when we told her to "get out of the water!"
Booby Trap
The last game I want to discuss is a game we names Booby Trap. This may be more for the demented children. (We turned out fine!) I want to talk about this game because unlike the other two, which are more universally played, this one seems to be limited to my brother and I. We usually played this at night time in the house. Basically on person would go into their room and set up a "booby trap." After that was done, the other poor person, the "victim", would walk into the booby trapped room and try not to have a ball hit them, or a book fall on them, or trip on string. The twist on this game was that the "victim" would walk into a pitch black room without any lights! It was definitely fun and painful, an "enter at your own risk" type of game.
George Bernard Shaw once said: "You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream thing that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'" The mind is limitless, as long as you allow it to be. We probably imagined more than forty different games to play growing up. Of course we didn't play video games all day, we had not internet, and it was unheard of for a child to have a cell phone. I believe more children should utilize their imagination rather than depending on technology. It's amazing how much technology has changed the world, in both positives and negatives.
So tell me, what kind of games did you imagine as a child?
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