The Games Of Summer The Nintendo Generation Is Missing Out On The Great Old Games That Older Generations Played All Summer Long
Sharon McKay remembers playing it mostly in the spring. Sometimes in the fall. Certainly all through summer vacation.
And most definitely she and her childhood friends played it at a certain time of day.
“Always after dinner, right?” she says. “It was always so dark you could hardly SEE each other. It always had to be after dinner. I could never remember playing that game in the daytime, and I don’t know anybody else who did.”
Yeah, the dark. That was the time for Kick the Can.
Never heard of it? You must be young.
Too young, for example, to remember the original “Twilight Zone” episode about a group of seniors rejuvenating themselves through the game.
Too young to remember when such things as Nintendo, surfing the Net, cable television, VCRs, shopping malls or neighborhood cineplexes didn’t even exist.
Too young to remember when you could legally play on a schoolyard playground once the final bell had rung. Or safely play in a park, period, without adult supervision.
Kick the Can hails from a different era. It, along with marbles, hopscotch, Hide-and-Seek, jump-rope and any number of other traditional outdoor games just don’t seem to be as prevalent as they once were.
And McKay, a Canadian who has written several books on children’s activities, is sad to see it happen.
“It’s the one thing that grandparents have right now over everyone else,” she says.
“Grandparents are the only ones who have this knowledge, and unless we get the games back they’re going to be lost.”
In an attempt to make sure that doesn’t happen, McKay and her husband David MacLeod have written “The Kick the Can Games Book” (Somerville House, 64 pages, $10.95). Packaged inside a real can, which includes such other game essentials as chalk, marbles and a ball, the book details the rules for a total of 25 “old-fashioned street games.”
McKay, MacLeod and book designer Marilyn Mets are hardly the first to draw attention to the enduring appeal of traditional games. The library shelves are filled with studies of such games, many of which are centuries-old.
The “Foxfire Book of Toys and Games,” for instance, is a study of games that are still played by the children of Appalachia.
In the book’s introduction, writer Eliot Wigginton reports that most researchers are “forced to throw up their hands in frustration when confronted by the problem of the games’ origins, stretching back in time, as they often did, to days beyond recorded history.”
Once writing developed, however, game references became common. That’s how we know that Egyptian children played with metal hoops and that Roman children played with marbles. English poet Michael Drayton wrote in 1598 of a game “where light-foot Fayries sport at Prison-Base.”
Kick the Can, says McKay, dates to the 19th century, “if not further,” and has been known by several names, including Can Can, Kick-Can-Copper, Kicky-Off, Choff-Choff, Tin-a-Lerky, Tin-Can-Bosher, Pom-Pom, Tin Tong Tommy, Kick Can Bobby, Kicky Tin Spy-Ho and Kick the Bucket.
The rules may be even more varied. For those of you who can’t remember, here’s how we played it at least in a couple of my neighborhoods:
Kick the Can is a variation of Hide-and-Seek. Any number can play, though eight to 10 players probably works best.
First, you designate someone as “It.” Then you designate someplace as “Home” (the best “Homes” are in the open but with handy hiding places nearby) and place a can on a specific spot. (Large coffee cans work the best.)
Someone is chosen to kick the can to start the game, and then everyone but “It” runs away. “It” chases the can and returns it “Home.” He or she then yells out the name of any player still in sight. Named players are considered captured and must return “Home.”
“It” then searches for the hidden players, capturing each one he or she finds. But if, in the process, an uncaptured player is able to kick the can off “Home” without being seen first, all the players are again free. “It” then must return the can “Home” before starting the capture process all over again.
The game is over when either all the players are captured, or “It” collapses in tears (which has been known to happen more than once during an evening).
There are many other outdoor games, of course. Some are played with balls, some with flags, while others require nothing more than swift feet.
All, though, require a healthy degree of cooperation among the participants because, in most instances, rules interpretations tend to vary.
John Brennan, a Spokane therapist, played a version of Kick the Can with his family recently and ended up arguing with his wife.
“She learned different rules than I did in Chicago,” he says.
But negotiation is one of the attractions of such games. Unlike the cold, unyielding orientation of a video game, where you either get past a badger-breath warrior or you don’t, the games played by children proceed according to their own understanding of the rules.
Often, getting past an obstacle involves simply a fast mouth and an imaginative mind.
As McKay sees it, the regimentation of children’s play was one of the reasons why traditional outdoor games no longer seem to be the standard for kids’ play in the suburbs and elsewhere. She dates the decline, in Canada anyway, from the early 1960s when, she says, “we saw, en masse, the introduction of the indoor gymnasium.”
This led to the growth of such organized sports as basketball and volleyball that, she says, were “much more competitive and adultdominated.” At the same time, the decline began for traditional pick-up games “where you had to play with, you know, Jamie’s little brother Spanky because he was baby-sitting him. And you had to adjust the rules for this kid and you had to adjust the rules to fit where you were playing.”
It led to a situation where kids no longer were allowed to be kids. “It wasn’t a death knell by any means,” McKay says, “but it was the start of an attitude that said, ‘The little games that you play aren’t important. Put them away with your childish things, get inside and play manly stuff.”’
And think about this for a moment: What was more fun, the moments between dinner and bedtime when you ran wild through the neighborhood, or those dead periods when, say, you stood in the outfield mumbling to yourself while your team’s pitcher walked one batter after another?
This is not to say that there is no joy in organized sports. Just as it is ridiculous, as former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop once did, to deride video games as “aberrations in childhood behavior.”
It merely means that adulthood comes calling all too quickly. Parents should let their children enjoy their innocence while they can.
Brennan, who has two children of grade-school age and another in junior high, agrees that the game-playing of past decades seems to be becoming a lost art.
Having played Hide-and-Seek with his family just last week, Brennan says, “I don’t know anybody else who does things like that.”
Which is sad, he adds, because he sees the playing of such traditional games “as a way to stay connected with my kids. Maybe that’s why the games are scarce: We’re not connected with our kids and we depend on the non-interactive things like computers and TV and the movies to keep our kids quiet.
“People are always looking for ways to connect with their kids,” he says, “and adults come up with these incredibly intellectually ingenious ideas. But kids don’t need that. Kids know how to connect with you if you’re willing to listen.”
Or at least run fast and hide well.
McKay, 41, has two children, ages 5 and 13. And in some ways, at least, she holds opinions that run against the grain of recent child-rearing methods.
For one thing, she believes in competition, which is an attitude that fell into disfavor about the same time that free-form playgrounds gave way to those equipped with complex architectural structures involving slides and wheels and swinging rubber tires.
“And kids had to be nice, they had to sha-are,” she sing-songs. “And with all this crappy sharing, they couldn’t gamble. I mean, some of the best lessons you ever want to learn was when you, in particular, a male, had your only steely, your best marble, and were you going to give this up? If you played, you could lose it, and you couldn’t go to a teacher and say, ‘Johnny took my marble,’ because they would look at you like you were nuts. If you lost it, you lost it. Adults weren’t going to help. There was real conclusion in that; there was risk-taking. And that’s gone now.”
Maybe. It certainly doesn’t seem likely that anyone could love a Pog quite like I did any of my favorite marbles, with their green- and blue- and red-crystal clearness.
But regardless of the ancillary effects, what may be the biggest loss associated with the decline of these games affects us all, from the sweatiest of children to the most couch potato of parents. And that involves the joyful kinds of spirit they can arouse, excitement in children, nostalgia in their elders.
“It sounds ridiculous, I know, but my favorite game really was Kick the Can,” McKay says. “It wasn’t just the game. Honestly, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you the rules without having to think. It was everything that went with it: It was the sunset, it was everyone yelling and laughing. It was the fun and the gentleness. And it was my mother screaming out the window, ‘Get in here for your bath.”’
McKay laughs, thinking back to those many evenings, those glorious sunsets. And then she adds, “If these games are going to be lost, fair enough. Things come and go. But there has to be some sort of understanding of what’s being lost with them.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Molly Quinn
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CHILDHOOD GAMES In the various neighborhoods I grew up in, we played a number of outdoor games. They involved mostly boys, but girls played, too. Here are the basic rules for some of my favorites:
Hide-and-Seek This variation of Kick the Can and/or Ring-alievio is just a more mature version of the baby game Peek-a-Boo. The person designated “It” closes his or her eyes and counts to an agreed-upon number (say, to 500 by fives). Other players hide and try to get “Home” without being seen (some variations require “It” to actually tag other players). Anyone who gets home without being seen is free. Game is over when all players are either captured or free.
Capture the Flag Here is a war game that the Boy Scouts made popular. It can be played everywhere from a gridded playing field (football, soccer) to a forest. Two teams of any number of players try to protect their respective flags while attempting to capture the flag of the other side. Opposing players caught in enemy territory can be taken prisoner and placed in jail. The game is over when all players from one side are jailed, leaving their flag defenseless, or when one side succeeds in capturing the other side’s flag and carrying it “Home.”
Marbles There are many marble games, but they break down basically into two types: chasies and potsies. Chasies involves any number, but most commonly is played by two participants. Players take turns shooting. The first to hit the other’s marble, accidentally or intentionally, wins. Potsies is best played by three to five players. Each player anties two to three marbles. One player drops the marbles from waist height in the middle of a circle that has about a 6-foot diameter. Taking turns, each player tries to shoot as many marbles as possible. If a target marble leaves the circle, the shooter keeps it and continues to shoot. His or her turn ends when the marble he is shooting exits the circle or when all the target marbles have been shot from the circle.
Tag There are numerous variations on this most basic of games. Any number can participate, and most games are played in a defined area. Here are two: Freeze tag means that any player tagged by “It” has to stand still until the game is over or unless he or she is set free (touched) by an unfrozen player. The game is over when “It” succeeds in freezing everyone else. Flashlight tag is a nighttime variation on tag where “It” tags other players by capturing them in the beam of a flashlight. This often becomes a variation of Hide-and-Seek.
Hopscotch This was a game mostly for girls (and try as I might, I could never beat my next-door neighbor, Carol Thomas). Draw a board similar to the one in the illustration that runs with this story (on page E1). Toss a token (a key chain works well) in the first space. Hop on one foot through the blocks in numerical order, without stepping on a line, in the box where your token lies, or losing your balance. Pick up your token on the way back. Toss your token into the next box and continue as before. If you drop your token, your turn is over. If you toss your token into the wrong box, your turn is over. The winner is the first one to hop all the way through without breaking the rules. Other games we played at home: Red Light-Green Light, 500 (a baseball game), Mother May I, Croquet, Mumbly Peg, Simon Says, Marco Polo (in swimming pools only) and a million war-type games. Games we played at school: Red Rover, Dodgeball, jump-rope (girls only, though some boys did twirl). - Dan Webster
Hide-and-Seek This variation of Kick the Can and/or Ring-alievio is just a more mature version of the baby game Peek-a-Boo. The person designated “It” closes his or her eyes and counts to an agreed-upon number (say, to 500 by fives). Other players hide and try to get “Home” without being seen (some variations require “It” to actually tag other players). Anyone who gets home without being seen is free. Game is over when all players are either captured or free.
Capture the Flag Here is a war game that the Boy Scouts made popular. It can be played everywhere from a gridded playing field (football, soccer) to a forest. Two teams of any number of players try to protect their respective flags while attempting to capture the flag of the other side. Opposing players caught in enemy territory can be taken prisoner and placed in jail. The game is over when all players from one side are jailed, leaving their flag defenseless, or when one side succeeds in capturing the other side’s flag and carrying it “Home.”
Marbles There are many marble games, but they break down basically into two types: chasies and potsies. Chasies involves any number, but most commonly is played by two participants. Players take turns shooting. The first to hit the other’s marble, accidentally or intentionally, wins. Potsies is best played by three to five players. Each player anties two to three marbles. One player drops the marbles from waist height in the middle of a circle that has about a 6-foot diameter. Taking turns, each player tries to shoot as many marbles as possible. If a target marble leaves the circle, the shooter keeps it and continues to shoot. His or her turn ends when the marble he is shooting exits the circle or when all the target marbles have been shot from the circle.
Tag There are numerous variations on this most basic of games. Any number can participate, and most games are played in a defined area. Here are two: Freeze tag means that any player tagged by “It” has to stand still until the game is over or unless he or she is set free (touched) by an unfrozen player. The game is over when “It” succeeds in freezing everyone else. Flashlight tag is a nighttime variation on tag where “It” tags other players by capturing them in the beam of a flashlight. This often becomes a variation of Hide-and-Seek.
Hopscotch This was a game mostly for girls (and try as I might, I could never beat my next-door neighbor, Carol Thomas). Draw a board similar to the one in the illustration that runs with this story (on page E1). Toss a token (a key chain works well) in the first space. Hop on one foot through the blocks in numerical order, without stepping on a line, in the box where your token lies, or losing your balance. Pick up your token on the way back. Toss your token into the next box and continue as before. If you drop your token, your turn is over. If you toss your token into the wrong box, your turn is over. The winner is the first one to hop all the way through without breaking the rules. Other games we played at home: Red Light-Green Light, 500 (a baseball game), Mother May I, Croquet, Mumbly Peg, Simon Says, Marco Polo (in swimming pools only) and a million war-type games. Games we played at school: Red Rover, Dodgeball, jump-rope (girls only, though some boys did twirl). - Dan Webster