The Games We Played

We were really no different from children in better neighborhoods, in that we played games just like any other kid. The war games were a bit more intense, perhaps... and games played as teenagers were all about showing your strength and toughness... but we played like children around the world play. We rode our bikes and hung out at the park and did normal child like things. Then we got a little older, and started playing toughness games. I played jungle gym tag until I saw a boy take an 8 foot tumble and bust his head open. The park had 5 concrete sewer pipes in pretty pastel colors, laid out like a horseshoe with about 4 feet between each one. We would play tag on them. If your feet touched the ground you lost, and had to wait for the next game to begin. I got a lot of bruises that way. The city decided the tunnels were too dangerous, and had all but one of them removed. That would have been a big bummer, except they tore out a lot of other dangerous equipment at the same time and replaced it with brand new ways to kill ourselves. They built a structure out of what looked like giant railroad ties and steel bars. There were 3 layers of horizontal ladders connected by platforms. I think we were supposed to hang from the bars, but nobody did. We simply moved our tag game to the new site. The lowest rack was 6 feet off the ground, and they got progressively higher. We'd run along the 12 inch wide wooden tie, chasing the other kids and laughing like crazy. Some of the older children would run across the bars themselves. That was how I saw a kid crack his head open. He was running over the bars and his foot slipped. He fell backwards and smacked his back on the bars behind him. He kind of went limp and slipped through the bars. He tumbled a bit as he fell, and wound up hitting his head on the concrete below. We all stopped playing and stared at him. It took a bit before we saw that he was bleeding. Bright red blood was beginning to pool around his hair, and he wasn't moving. He must have knocked himself out. Nobody got down and helped him. We were all too afraid he was dead. We were speechless. He stirred, groaned, and in a flash his friends were around him helping him up. They half carried him home, and I never played tag on the monkey bars again.

We played street football, street frisbee and street soccer. We also played alleyball. To play alleyball you needed at least 2 people, something resembling a bat, something reasonably round and hard, and bases. Every Christmas, some kid would get a wiffle ball set. That would last for a month or so, and then we'd revert to using broomsticks, 2x4's or cast off pipes. Bases were easy, any rock or piece of trash would work. The number of bases varied depending on how much crap we could find in the alley. Likewise "balls" ranged from rocks to beach balls, depending upon what was available that day.