After a good game of tag on some days, even our teacher would give us some fun games to play on rainy days in the classroom. One of the really fun games was "Heads up 7-up". Now let me see if I can remember how the game was played. Each student would be sitting at their own desk and would have to put their heads down on the desk and cover their eyes. Prior to the game beginning, the teacher would give each of us a number to remember, and that number would determine who had to get up while everyone's head was down and pick someone in the class to be "it". Now you would think it would be easy to remember who was what number, but it wasn't because the teacher gave each of us a random number. The goal was to walk around the class tap someone else and then sit back down. Then the person who was tapped had to guess who tapped them. If the person guessed correctly, then the same person had to do it again. If the tapped person guessed wrong then they were now the person who was "it". There was some skill to this game because you wanted to trick people into thinking that it was someone different. When I was "it" I would quietly get up from my desk, walk to a different side of the room, make some noise and then get to the person I wanted to tag. Although I think it was my giggle that would give me away sometimes because I was having so much fun playing the game.
One day a month, the teacher would schedule for us to obtain the parachute that the school owned for an extremely fun game. The teacher would divide the class in half and the halves would line up around the opened parachute. Each of us would then grab the edge and pull it tight in the circle and place a big rubber ball on the parachute. The goal was to try to bounce the ball around the circle on top of the parachute and try to bounce it off the chute on the opposite side. Can you imagine a bunch of kids holding on to this chute and moving it up in down to bounce the ball all over the place. You would be amazed how difficult it was to get the ball to bounce off of the opposite side. It was such a fun game, but afterward our arms were worn out, and our tummies ached because we were all laughing so much.
One day in the 5th grade a few of the girls that I knew from my neighborhood were playing a game that I never had an interest in called "Hopscotch". I noticed that they were hopping and jumping all over the place and it seemed to be fun. I walked over and started to watch them play and quickly learned the game. It seemed rather simple and looked fun. So one of the girls challenged me to a game, and of course I could not be shown-up by an icky girl, so I accepted the challenge. We started and before I knew it, I was having a blast because I was beating this icky girl!!! I am winning...BOYS ARE BETTER AT EVERYTHING THAN GIRLS. (Open mouth...insert foot). Most of the time, I noticed the girls would stop playing by the time they reach the numbers 4-5, so I figured if I got to 4-5 first I would win. WRONG!!!! The game was going so fast that I got to 4-5 and thought I won, when another girl said that I needed to go to 6 now. Hmm, that is pretty far to jump to...but I am a boy and we are better than girls, so I tried. I gathered my pride, my strength and did my little run to jump to 7. At that time in school we had not learned about GRAVITY, but I got a crash course in gravity that afternoon. I leaped from the 1 and ask I went through the air in slow motion, I knew I could do it. Through the bottom of my vision I could see the numbers below me...2...3...4-5...6...7. I did it, I made it, I made it and I am better than these silly girls. But wait, why is my foot still moving, yet I am getting closer to the ground! OH NO, why am I falling, I can't fall, I....I....I landed right on my butt and bounced a good 5 feet further.
As I try to play it cool and ignore the laughter of the boys around me from falling, I hear laughter now coming from behind me. Why are they laughing? Can't they see that I fell and you should never laugh at a person who falls? As I brush myself off, I notice that it got a little cooler all of sudden to my legs. Did I land in water or something or it is just the cold hands of "embarrassment" grabbing me. Nope it was much worse! In my ability to try to show-off and prove yet again that boys are better than girls at games...I noticed that I had ripped the seat of my pants and my underwear (to all moms, yes they were clean) was showing through my pants. Needless to say, that was the last day that I played hopscotch!
Now in the sixth grade and still being teased about my 5th grade underwear fashion show, I knew I had to do something to make people remember me for something other than my Scooby Doo underwear. It was close to the end of the school year and we are all just a few weeks away from going to Junior High School. I was much older and wiser than I was in the 4th and 5th grade. I decided to try my luck at the schools track meet events. Each grade had the chance to participate in races and jumping events against their own classmates. So one afternoon I decided to get into the 100 yard dash that a couple of my neighborhood friends would compete in. I had never done any sports before this moment so I wasn't sure I could do it, or if I was good enough to do it. When it was our turn to run, we all lined up and waited for the teacher to say go. Little did I know that this exact moment was the beginning of my years of running track and field. I shocked everyone by out running the two boys that were considered to be the fastest at the school. Yes, I finally found something that I really loved to do!
The end of the school year had arrived and the day before the last day of school, our teacher decided to take everyone over to her townhouse complex and have a little graduation pool party. One major problem, I DON"T KNOW HOW TO SWIM. I mostly stayed in the shallow end of the pool and still had a blast. Sodas, chips, hot dogs, hamburgers, sodas, ice cream, sodas and even sodas. (Notice the amount of sodas?!?!) Well, I drank so many sodas and ate so many sweets that I was sick as could be by the time I got home and went to bed. We had a blast, but oh my poor tummy!
School is out, and the summer has arrived....but in a few months another school and it is much bigger, but there is a great treat for me, because I get reunited with other friends from the 1-3 grades.
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