We also played a game called TV Tag. We liked our games to have oxymoronic titles.

The one good thing about a long, soul-crushing winter is that the first nice days in spring are like an event.  Everyone is outside.  It's like an impromptu city-wide picnic breaks out as soon as the temperature tops 60 degrees.

There were kids out in the park tonight flying kites.  (It was a good thing that the kids were otherwise occupied because the swings were being used by cigarette-smoking college students.)  I was thinking as I walked by that if kids these days spend less time outside than we did, it's probably not that we were any less lazy.  Our technology was just worse.  We had an Atari growing up (actually a Sears Entertainment System, Atari Compatible) and after about ten minutes of trying to make that unresponsive controller make the little stick man grab the rope and swing over a pond, you'd develop such a cramp in your hand that you had no choice but to quit and find something else to do.

I do remember though spending all day every day outside anytime it was nice enough out.  We had two other kids in our neighborhood and the five of us would spend our summers playing baseball or freeze tag or whatever else anybody yelled out with enough conviction to make everyone else follow along. 

One game in particular that we liked was called Moving Statues.  Did you play this?  You had one person who was the shopkeeper, one customer, and everyone else as statues.  The customer went around the side of the house and then the shopkeeper would swing the statue people around and then let go, hurling them through the air.  You could choose slow or fast for the swinging around part, except we called this salt or pepper.  I don't know why.  Nobody ever picked salt though anyway.  Not only was it wimpy, but the very point of this game was to be thrown with as much velocity as possible and still land without sustaining a major injury. 

Much like a less complex game we'd play, which involved running down the hill, launching ourselves off a big rock, and landing in the neighbors' yard.  I don't remember any of us ever getting hurt doing that either.  For we were young!  And limber!  And not yet capable of sustaining sleeping-related injuries!  (I'm not sure my mom knew about that game.  Happy Mother's Day!  We all survived the front yard pretty much unscathed, despite our best attempts to maim ourselves!)

So anyway, you'd get spun around and you had to stay however you landed.  Then, based on your pose, you'd decide what sort of moving statue you would be.  The customer would come in, the shopkeeper would take him or her around the shop, and when tapped by the shopkeeper, the statues would come to life.  It seems like we would be things like dancers or boxers or whatever it is that elementary school kids would think would be a cool moving statue to have around your house.  I don't really remember.  (Again: not the important part of the game.)  The customer would pick one and then the game would start over.  Repeat until bored or called in for dinner.

Ah, nostalgia.  Now somebody bring me a Flintstones push pop and my firefly-catching jar.  And then make me some dinner and call me in for it.  I promise to hose off my feet before coming in.  If you play your cards right, I might even bring you a big bouquet of those little yellow flowers that are growing all over the yard.  Just don't make me go to bed while it's still light out.  Pleeeeeeeease?