While buying some games as a gift from Angel Tree, I realized that many games nowadays are electronic games. It made me start thinking about my own childhood days and the games we used to play.
Because we were poor, many of our games were free or very cheap. I remember one of our favorite indoor games was playing a card game called “Go Fishing” or “Go Fish.” It is usually played with two to five players. Usually both adults and children would join in on a game of Go Fish.
Using a standard deck of cards, 7 cards are dealt to each of the players. The rest of the deck is spread out in the center of the table. The first player will ask another player to give him his cards of a particular rank. For example, “Give me all your Queens.” The requesting player cannot request a card that he does not have in his hand.
If the requested player has cards of the requested value, he turns them over and the requesting player wins another turn. If the asked player does not have any cards of the requested rank, he says “go fishing” or “go fishing”. The requesting player draws a card from the pot in the center of the table.
When a player has four cards of a given rank, then he has “a book” and places that book face up in front of him on the table. When a player runs out of cards, he draws a card from the stack and play continues until all cards are gone from the stack. At that moment the game ends and the player with the most books wins.
We had several different card games that we could play with the same deck of cards.
When the weather was nice and we could play outside, we would entertain ourselves with a neighborhood game of baseball or softball or grab a stick and play a game of hopscotch in the dirt or on a sandy area.
We lived in a rural area and our preference was to play outdoors. We would walk through the woods and go down to the nearby pool to swim on a hot day.
Kids today start very young with learning DVDs, TV entertainment and as they get older there are all the video games consuming hours and hours of their time.
That’s not to say that these games can’t be shared between adults and children. For example, Mario Kart Wii is a game loved by both racing fanatic parents and kids alike.
Learning DVDs can help a child get a head start on things like their AB-C, even before they start daycare.
And even before that, parents can get an entertaining DVD that helps the child learn to go to the toilet.
Little girls still have dolls; they are simply more sophisticated. Dolls today are almost like a real baby. Years ago, families had so many children that I guess we just had something real to learn about what babies really do.
Little kids still have toy trucks, but I guess you don’t have to push them by hand anymore.
There’s nothing too good or bad about old and present, however sometimes it’s fun to just look back and compare. It’s even fun to share some of the older games with your kids and play them together.
