Detroit, New York, and LA, but I'm stuck in the NT

The 'Hood

Some of my happiest childhood memories involve the children in my neighbourhood. There was a time when all we seemed to do was play in my yard..........a far cry from what 'kids these days' do!! In fact, there hardly seems to be many kids in the neighbourhood now. I guess my childhood buddies have all just moved on..........

It would usually start with my cousin and I playing outside on a Saturday afternoon. This was a common occurrence after we got home from gymnastics. Then the two boys from next door would come over and we might play a better game, like 4-square. Then, my other next door neighbour, Holly would come over, and we would all decide to do something else, like go on my see-saw. However, my see-saw could also spin around, and it was always much more fun when heaps of people pushed it round whilst two people sat on the ends. The guy who did this best was Daniel, my across the road neighbour, he was older than us and obviously stronger. The other boys across the road would also join in and pretty soon, we had a huge crowd. There was always little brothers who needed looking after when things got too rough. Often the see-saw would topple over because it was spun around too quickly and we would all fall off. The see-saw was quickly picked up and two new people would get on.

After we got tired of pushing people around and around, we would play different games, like red-rover, hide-and-seek (which we re-named hidey-go-tip, due to the tip-ish nature of the game), tip, and brandy. Red-rover would always get rough and was made even harder by the coconut tree in my front yard being in the way, we had to dodge around it and try not to step on the bull-ants which would bite us. During tip we had a 'barlese' place which was our tap outside where you could get a drink and were immune from getting tipped. The person who was 'in' had to give you 10 seconds to get away from them after getting a drink. I would often use the tap for my own convenience much to the others annoyance, and when the person who was 'it' was almost going to tip me, I would run to the tap and get a drink. Hehe, sneaky, wasn't I?? Brandy consisted of the person who was 'in' throwing a tennis ball (or something similar) at people, and if you got hit, you were 'in'. The boys would always chuck it really hard at us. I can't remember if my aim was accurate......

I really miss those days and I'm so glad for them. I don't think I'm very close with any of the kids I played with now, but we had so much fun together when we were young, weird how people grow apart..........

I'll leave you all now and bury myself in my nostalgia.

Jack Handy Thought For The Day: I think there should be something in science called the 'reindeer effect'. I don't know what it would be, but I think it'd be good to hear someone say, "Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect".

posted by Anika From Darwin @ 4:23 PM