Looking back - we played what they don’t

We played then, what they don’t, now.

I notice that children nowadays play modern toys, video games and modern sports. After school, they occupy themselves with tuition classes, music classes, self defense classes, sports lessons and so much more other activities. I wonder whether they have time for the simple games we played during our times..

I remember.. we used things around the house to create a variety in our games. As we grew older, we got bored with toys and we became more creative in our games.

We used to play ‘batu seremban’ (5 tiny bean bags in the size of 3cmx3cm) is school. Thambhi and I got carried away with it, I even made ourselves our own ‘batu seremban’ using green/red beans to be played at home.

We played ‘congkak’ in the school library. We found that interesting too. So, when we get home, for many days, we would collect small stainless steel and plastic bowls and line them up to make the ‘congkak’ board!

We also had the all time favourite, the Barbie and Ken dolls. We made doll houses in our garden. We took small bricks to make the walls of each room. We padded the floor with some fine bamboo leaves...

We made used of the rubber bands too. Amma taught us to throw the rubber bands into a standing nail. and nail. After that, we had a craze of the rubber band jumping rope. We collected as many rubber bands as we could and tried to make real long jumping ropes. This, we played with the neighbourhood kids. It was real fun..

Other than the jump rope, we played something what we called slipper! Yeah, it is a funny name for a game! I guess it got its name because slippers was the main element in this game. 3 pieces of slippers made to stand against each other, making it look like the Indians tent. Then, we would be divided into groups. The persons from the group who built the slipper tent (group A) would have to protect it while the other group (group B) would have to destroy it using a tennis ball. Every time Group A got the ball, they would try to hit the persons in Group B to ‘kill’ them. Similarly, Group B would have to kill everybody in Group A while trying to destroy the slipper tent. The games goes on till everyone in either group is killed.

Apart from that, we played ‘tenteng’ (hop on one leg in a T-shaped box, make a turn and then back), played with marbles, wooden tops and made our own kites which most of the times dropped almost instantly!

On rainy days, we played house in our house. We made a make shift house using our double decker bed. One of us would be living upstairs and the other downstairs. We visited each other and served Twisties or Cheezels as snacks.

We didn’t like using the ladder to climb on to the upper deck. Like monkeys, we would place our foot on the side of the lower deck and place the other knee on the upper deck and pull ourselves up!

How I miss those games.. I will definitely teach my boys how to play those simple yet fun games when they grow bigger!