The games we used to play
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Several months ago, I made contact with an old friend I hadn't spoken to for probably fifteen years, thanks to Facebook. Back then, she and I knew each other because our parents were friends and whenever there was a social gathering (which was quite frequent) the parents would meet up and we, as children, would be taken along with them. Over time, these gatherings became fewer until they stopped entirely, and even before that the children involved had reached an age where going to parties with parents was somewhat more optional and considerably less cool.
Getting in touch again sparked all sorts of memories of those evenings spent hiding away from the monotony of adult conversations and alcohol consumption, where the group's collective children would team up to pass the time with whatever means were available to us. This was the late eighties and early nineties, and the cross gender mix pretty much ruled out action figures and dolls as a group activity, leaving us with boxed games.
A group favourite was Twister. This is a game that involves a lot of floor space on which a mat is spread with a series of coloured circles on it. Somebody sensible will usually hold a board with a series of colours and pictures on it (representing hands and feet) and a spiny pointer in the middle. This person will spin it and wherever the pointer stops will indicate where somebody needs to put their corresponding hand or foot on the mat. The basic goal is to replace dignity with gravity and be the last one supporting their own body weight, but usually ends each time in a sprawling mass of mismatched and slightly bruised arms and legs.
Another hit was the slightly less dangerous KerPlunk. In KerPlunk a cylinder with a slightly plump centre is perforated by numerous straws, on top of which rests a bunch of marbles. The object is to remove the straws one by one while either trying to displace as few marbles as possible, or displacing them in the direction of an opponent's allocated container underneath the cylinder (the winner being the one with the fewest marbles at the end). In theory, it could be considered a game of tactical precision in which knowledge of physics is advantageous, but in practice, with children, it's a ramshackle affair in which straws are picked for their potential to make the most noise.
Hungry Hippos is a game that most parents probably thought would be a fun idea until they realised what it's about. My mother hates noise and quickly banned me from using mine. I'm reminded of this one because, a couple of years ago, some friends bought it for Christmas and we played it for a while on New Year's Eve. Until that point, it hadn't occurred to me that the game also had the potential to be rather aggressive, as players bash their respective hippos maniacally in an attempt to gather the most little white balls. One can learn a lot about a person from how they treat a plastic hippo.
While I have only fond memories of these times, I probably wouldn’t consider playing any of these games now. But it occurs to me that I'm not entirely sure why. As a means to pass the time, they're perfectly adequate, if a little noisy in places, and are just harmless fun (with the possible exception of Hungry Hippos). Perhaps I should reconsider. In the words of George Bernard Shaw:
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.