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 By Patrick Hurley June 9, 2006 Wasn't it great to be a kid? There was no political correctness and we were free to say and do whatever we wanted as we played games without any real hallmark of common sense or intellectual stimulation. In other words, we grew up stupid. But, thankfully, we didn't REALIZE it at the time! It was a series of activities that we shared with our friends and never gave a second thought to life and limb. Or brain. The overnight standard was called, "Let's see who can stay up the LATEST!" This was a daring game strictly for the hale and hearty. The rules were pretty basic...BE THE LAST ONE TO FALL ASLEEP! This was not nuclear physics; just a chance to prove to everyone else how adult like you were. I believe every child in America, at one time or another, played this game. There was only one problem with the logical concept of the contest.... When you won....no one knew. What kind of competition is THAT? It's like playing a football game without an end zone. Of course, the next morning there would be a major argument between the first place winner and the runner up. Cries of, "You fell asleep FIRST!" were chanted back and forth like two big horn sheep blasting away at each other until mom shouted, "Sit down and eat your PANCAKES!" That always shut us up. Then, there was the water staple of goofiness, "Marco Polo." Of course, none of us had any clue WHO Marco was, his name had been passed down from kids long before us, probably in China. We would singsong to each other as we dodged the kid who had his or her eyes closed as they thrashed in the pool looking for us. We would dive, duck, squirm, evade, elude, twist and lay motionless at the bottom of the pool until our lungs were ready to burst, to avoid being tagged. If it were a public plunge, the rest of the populace hated this game because it had an irritating shriek to it, "Marco...POLO!" Marco...POLO! We sounded like a mob of fanatical cultists as if to say, "Marco...WACO!" I almost drowned the first time I played the game. No one told me to come back up... Of course, the most athletic of games at any sleepover was loosely titled, "Let's throw objects at the light switch because we are too LAZY to get out of bed and turn it off!" This technique was popular in the pre-Clapper days. Everyone would get into bed and after a few moments of lying there in that silence that accompanies our first realization that our day is finally over, it would dawn on us that something was amiss. The light was still ON! Naturally, an intense debate ensued with everyone doing their lawyerly best to convince someone ELSE to depart the comfy confines of their beds to terminate the annoying glare which, back in those days, EXPLODED down upon us from the middle of the ceiling. Somewhere in history, perhaps in a cave, someone got the idea to hurl an object toward the offending light....in our day it usually involved shoes, books, an empty Nestle's tin, tupperware or even our younger brother... But, the reason this game was ridiculous was because of what we did AFTER we ran out of ammunition and had to get out of bed to finally face reality. Instead of turning off the light however, which would be the mark of a SANE person, we ignored the reasoning behind THAT concept and gathered all our flying weapons for another strike at the switch once we returned to our beds! This game went on for hours until the wall began to disappear or our father appeared ominously in the doorway, whichever came first. The days of sneaking out after midnight, crank calling innocent people from the phone book, (do you have Prince Albert in a CAN?) laying mayonnaise on our friend's hand (as soon as they fell asleep!) followed by tickling their nose, making cherry cokes, playing our favorite 45's, singing theme songs from our favorite television shows and laughing so hard until we snorted are all a permanent part of our past now. But, there was a time in our lives when we enjoyed just being a kid. Little did we realize how special those days were back then. The idea of being old like our parents was so foreign to us. Our main occupation was going to school. But, our first love was having FUN! I can still remember every one of my best friends between kindergarten and seventh grade. I bet you could, too! I would also bet we don't have close friends now like we did when we were twelve years old, but that's part of growing up, I guess. Still, I wish I could call up some of my adult buddies tonight and challenge them to walk the streets looking for a car that would pass just close enough for us to throw a peach at so we could make one more memory... ------------ About the author: Pat Hurley has won three Emmy awards for writing, hosting and producing television shows. He resides in Southern California. Email: coolhumor@sbcglobal.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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