During a lunchtime gym class the other day the teacher had us running around four orange cones, alternately shuffling and sprinting sideways and backwards. My partner for the class was a woman of similar vintage, and between spurts of activity we started reminiscing about the playground games of our childhood. I have not thought about "Chinese jump rope" in years. Two girls (boys never played it) would loop a long elastic band around their ankles and stand facing each while, while a third girl would stand between them and with her feet would create intricate patterns in the band.
The metal slides (which reached leg-scorching temperatures in the sun), the creaky wooden teeter-totters and the shaky jungle gyms of my youth, all anchored in the macadam playground, would never pass muster in these lawsuit-prone days.
One activity my gym friend had never heard of involved two long, thick bamboo poles. Two people (boys or girls) would kneel down facing each other and holding the ends of the sticks. They'd bang them on the ground twice, then click them together. Meanwhile the third person would dance in and out of the poles, trying to avoid getting his or her ankles smashed. Easier said that done when the pole-holders increased the tempo all of a sudden!
(Reader Jack G. informed me that this game is called tinikling: "I and the
girls P.E. teacher did this activity with the middle school students during the 70s
and 80s at Kennett Middle School.")
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