Childhood games

Did you and your siblings ever invent strange and wonderful games?

My siblings and I had a few. One was called "Is it broken?"  The crux of the game was to determine if the piece of food being held in front of your face by sibling X is either broken in half or not. Yes, it was a game of full of strategy. The hardest items to fool people with were potato chips. If broken in half it was hard to line up the edges neatly enough to look whole. Also, if you applied too much pressure the chip would crumble due to the stress points already being weak. Ha, I sounded like an engineer there :-)

So that was one game we played at mealtimes.

The other one that I remember had something to do with pretending we were ice cubes. This game could only be played when there were small/med sized fluffy clouds over head and wind. Basically you had to run from one shady spot to another without "melting". When a fluffy cloud passed over the sun you would strategically run from one shadow to another. You had to time it right and make sure your run wasn't too long or you might get caught in the sun and melt. We also liked to run down the street in the cloud shadow and then dive behind a parked car when it outpaced us.

I remember playing something similar to the ice cube game in the car as well. It involved pillows and hiding. Always a good combo.


Our kids have taken on the tradition of making up new games. Today the girls were playing "guess what is on this side of the sandwich?" Is it the peanut butter side or the honey side? Ohhhhh the suspense!

Another game they made up is called "hide N' seek wrestle." Like the traditional hide N' seek you have a someone counting and others hiding. However instead of running to base when found, you have to run to the living room rug and wrestle with the counter. You do this with each person you find. After the last person is found everyone goes to the rug for an all out brawl. Once exhausted or hurt*, you start the game over again. Brandon particularly enjoys playing this one with the kids. You have to watch out for G man though. He has learned how to dish out the elbow and if you aren't on alert you receive one in the face or gut.


*it is always someone gets hurt, never tired