Kick the Can, Freezetag, and Hopscotch: A Top 10 List of the Games that Kept GenXers Outside

Kristin Nilsen 0:00

Hey listeners, before we begin, just quickly, I'd love to tell you about three ways you can support the pop culture Preservation Society. As you know, we are an independent podcast. We're not owned or paid by anybody. We do everything by ourselves, and all of our financial support comes from you, the listeners. So if you'd like to help us pay our bills so we can keep on trucking. Here's what you can do. One, pledge your support with a recurring monthly donation on Patreon. There are three levels of support, and each one comes with exclusive bonus content. Just go to patreon.com or look for the link in our show notes. Two, subscribe to our YouTube channel. Did you know we had one even if you don't have any intention of watching anything on YouTube. Do it anyway, because when we get to a certain level of subscribers, we have a shot at getting a little compensation, and every little bit counts three. This one is new. Buy your books using our bookshop.org, Link bookshop.org. Is an online bookseller that benefits small independent bookstores, and when you use our link, we get a little bit of that love. All of these links will be in our show notes and in our email newsletter and in our link tree. But most importantly, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, and thank you for sharing with your Gen X friends. You are the reason we do this, and we couldn't be more grateful to you, Nanu. Nanu, keep on trucking and may the Force be with you. I

Carolyn Cochrane 1:23

love a good hopscotch. I wonder how it got its name. I don't know. I guess we'll never know.

Kristin Nilsen 1:27

Well, there's hopping on one foot and drinking scotch, hello. Well, there's a

Speaker 1 1:35

song that we're singing. Come on, get happy. Oh, a whole lot of love is what we'll be bringing we'll make you happy.

Kristin Nilsen 1:50

Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who would commit murder for a little road trip sized box of Fruit Loops.

Michelle Newman 2:00

We believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear, like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition. And today, we'll

Carolyn Cochrane 2:13

be saving a time before screens and digital distractions, when our social lives revolved around the cul de sac in our neighborhood friends and strategic moments of Ghost in the graveyard and Red Rover. I'm Carolyn,

Kristin Nilsen 2:26

I'm Kristen,

Michelle Newman 2:27

and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists

Speaker 2 2:36

in the playground, in my mind, in a world that used to be used to be close your eyes, and today

Carolyn Cochrane 2:45

we're taking a trip back to a simpler time, before smartphones, before helicopter parenting and way before organized play dates. Today's episode you guys is all about neighborhood games, the ones we played in backyards and cul de sacs and empty lots and often at night, right? We're talking kick the can, freeze tag, Red Rover, flashlight tag, and those epic Hide and Seek marathons that seemed to stretch until the street lights came on. And I think this is a point that we all need to talk about a little bit. These weren't just games, right? These were our first tastes of freedom, of creativity and of community. They taught us how to negotiate, right? I mean, we're making rules to games. We're solving problems. We're making friends, maybe a few enemies, but definitely friends. They built resilience, and they sparked our imaginations and gave us a sense of independence that is so hard to replicate today.

Kristin Nilsen 3:41

Absolutely. I mean, I think, I think it is underestimated how much those experiences turned us into independent people and people who could get along with other kids. I mean, you didn't play with just your best friends in the backyard. You played with all the kids, whether you got along with them or not. You figured it out, and you included everybody, I mean, until you didn't, and then that turned into some sort of neighborhood thing. You had to figure out too, somebody was excluded. Now there was some kind of negotiation or coming together, or teams or sides or whatever. It was, like a little microcosm of life, and we were figuring it out in our backyards. Yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 4:19

no. Adults were getting in, you know, they weren't coming and trying to solve the problems for us. No,

Michelle Newman 4:24

yeah, that's what I was gonna say. It was team building and problem solving at its finest. Because I really do feel like now, if you get a group of 10 year olds together, well, first of all, you would never have a group of 10 year olds together at nine o'clock at night anymore. Oh, no, that's generally

Kristin Nilsen 4:40

if it's an away game

Michelle Newman 4:44

to play outside in your neighborhood. I just don't think you do if you get a group of 10 year olds together. I really just feel like there's usually a screen involved. Yeah, we had to be so creative and come up with either games that we made up or. Yeah, the tried and true games, and with that came a lot of problem solving with rules and who's breaking the rules and who's a cheater, and how do you deal with the cheater? Yeah, I don't know that they have those types of basic lessons in what they're doing now, right? In Minecraft or Yeah, right. They get together and they play. They're looking at a screen of some sort usually think

Carolyn Cochrane 5:20

about it too. Michelle, you were saying about when, you know, when have you seen 10 year olds, a group of them together? And also think about the neighborhood games that we played with the age difference. I mean, we were maybe 10, you know, 10, but we were playing with some eight year olds and some six year olds were probably in there, maybe some 12 year olds. It was kind of age was not as much of a factor like you figured out how to play with the little kids, and, you know, maybe they got a little bit of a head start in kickball or whatever.

Michelle Newman 5:50

And as a little sister, we were included. Yes, that's because the little brothers and sisters were included in our neighborhood games we all played together. So you're right. Yeah, I didn't think about that. That's a really good point. I think

Kristin Nilsen 6:02

that the biggest difference here between our childhoods and today's childhoods is the level of prescription. Everything today is prescribed. We didn't have anything prescribed. I didn't have a schedule. I didn't have anything on my schedule ever, except like Sunday school. That was it. And I did a little experiment this year. I was teaching a class. You've heard me talk about this before. I was teaching a class for fourth and fifth graders on creative journaling inspired by Taylor Swift, and I just wanted to get a sense from them of how busy they were and what their lives were like, and so I had them come up to the board and write down their schedule. I just said that. I just want you to write your schedule down and everything. And every single person literally had on Monday, I have this. On Tuesday, I have this. I would guess each kid had probably five things they were signed up for, and where in that is there any room for their own decision making or their own creativity. Michelle, you said this was so creative. Yeah, we were making up shit. We were making up our own shit. All of this is prescribed when you go to an enrichment activity. I also ask them, How many of you signed up for these because you asked, or did your parents sign you up? I was just gonna ask you, yeah, and there were things like soccer for the most part, like, Oh, I love soccer, but most everything else, they said, Oh, my mom signed me up and please understand we're not pointing fingers when we're saying this. We are those parents,

Michelle Newman 7:33

yeah, yeah, I did it. Yeah. They had tons of stuff,

Kristin Nilsen 7:37

yes. You know my I felt a little bit like this was my failure in parenting, is that I had this idealized vision of all the kids running around the neighborhood, and that's really what I wanted, except that there was no one outside to play with. We had tons of kids. They weren't home. That's a good point. They weren't home, and so then I have to solve that by signing him up for something.

Michelle Newman 7:58

Well, okay, but here's a good question, Kristen, how did you know they weren't home? Because did you call the parents, or did wouldn't or did Liam go and knock on doors? Because when we were little, and my mom would say, go outside and play, if I looked down the street and I didn't see anybody, I'd go up to neighbors doors and knock. Is Ashley here, can actually come out and play. I would challenge that kids today do not just go knock on doors, because if you say go outside and play. I bet Katie's home and your kid would go, no Katie's at piano, no Katie's at soccer. Or if you said I just saw their car pull in, your child would say, I'm not gonna

Kristin Nilsen 8:30

go knock on their No, God no.

Michelle Newman 8:34

We used to just roam the streets and knock on people's doors at random. So

Kristin Nilsen 8:38

here's a phrase that is not in anyone's vocabulary anymore. Is Stephanie home? Nobody says that. Can Stephanie play? Can Stephanie play? Yeah, come out and play. Come out and play. Yes, we can lament that all day long. I just wonder, will the pendulum swing back eventually? I

Carolyn Cochrane 8:57

don't think so. I don't know about this pendulum that ship may have sailed maybe,

Kristin Nilsen 9:02

maybe, unless there's a concerted effort by an entire society to do it. But soon, we won't have people who remember that anymore. Soon the parents will be the people who had the prescribed childhood, and so either they won't have any model or or they will yearn for something different.

Michelle Newman 9:20

You know how we always have that joke, that old of saying, of like, oh yeah, my grandma would say I had to walk three miles in the snow to school with no shoes. We're gonna be the grandparent saying to our grandkids and listeners, we have a lot of listeners who already are grandparents, so tell us if we're right or wrong here. Saying, back in my day, we used to just get sent outside to play, and we wouldn't come home till this after the street lights came, and

Kristin Nilsen 9:46

sometimes you weren't allowed inside. You're you try and go in. I'd be like, Nope, you can't come back till dinner. I know, but

Michelle Newman 9:53

that's gonna be us. We're gonna be the well people, our stories are gonna be, yeah, we used to, this

Carolyn Cochrane 9:59

is such a. Treasured pastime for our generation, I think, and it's something we we long for so much so that, you know, we've had people reach out suggesting that we talk about this as an episode. It's so

Kristin Nilsen 10:12

true. You can tell just by the comments that we've gotten from our Instagram posts and the and the DMS that we get from people about the games that we played outside, especially at night, that this is something that people want to talk about and it's something that they treasure dearly, maybe because it's gone, I don't know. So a long time ago, at least two summers ago, we were eating outside. So I know it was at least in the summertime, my friend Tony dropped the word ghoul at dinner. I don't know if ghoul means anything to anybody but ghoul being the bastardization of the word goal, we think we're not actually sure, and that could be, ghoul could be used interchangeably with base. I had not considered the concept of base, the importance of base in your childhood for 45 years, and just the concept of base or ghoul led to a whole conversation at dinner about how we played outside in our neighborhoods when we were growing up. I didn't really remember ghoul, but then my husband is like, cool, cool.

Well, I don't think there's a spelling for it. I think I just put g, U, L, E, but Mike knew, and he did not grow up in the same place as Tony, and he said you would use it just like bass, so like you're touching base and somebody tried to tag you, and you're like, ghoul. We think nobody really knows, but both Mike and Tony have talked about this. We're like, was it goal? We think it was ghoul, and that night, after talking about ghoul, that led to a whole topic of how we were a feral generation that entertained itself outside with endless games without the supervision of grown ups, even after dark. And that topic went on the list, and that's how we got here today. So that's where this topic began. Is with Tony going cool. But there's also a book called one alley summer. It's a short book written in verse that takes place completely outside, mostly in the alley where all the kids played all day, every day. This is obviously not a contemporary novel that would never happen today, and it's based on the author's experience growing up in the 70s in a neighborhood very similar to mine, and it turns out that she grew up just across the Mississippi River from me, so no wonder this book feels nostalgic for me, and it wasn't just the games they played, but the ways that you occupied your time and the situations that you found yourself in when you're outside all day long, and you're not allowed back in the house. Like there's always a house that you're afraid of, like, does a young lady live there or or a witch, or is it a boogeyman that maybe yelled at one kid one time, and from that one experience, the story grew so that now you think that guy's an ex con who maybe went to jail for kidnapping children or something, and maybe part of your day is daring someone to touch his house, you're gonna touch it, and then you're gonna run away, or,

Carolyn Cochrane 13:12

God forbid, the ball, like went over the fence. Who's gonna

Unknown Speaker 13:17

go get it? Who's gonna go

Michelle Newman 13:18

get it? That ball's left to die.

Kristin Nilsen 13:19

Yes, there were so there were so many dares. Like dares alone could be considered a neighborhood game, and in one alley summer, the loser of a bat has to put her arm through the hole in a chain link fence where a rabid dog lives. Now, does the dog actually have rabies? No, of course not. That's just neighborhood lore. There's a rabid dog, and you she lost the bet, so she has to put her hand in the fence where the rabid dog lives, and you have to leave it there for three seconds, like, that's the dare. We

Michelle Newman 13:53

had a dog. We had a rabid dog in my neighborhood in third grade, and one of one of our playmates got bit, and she had to have shots in her stomach. In her stomach.

Kristin Nilsen 14:04

Yes, okay, when was the last time you heard about somebody like getting bitten by a rabid dog and having to get shots in their stomach? And there's and the needle was this long, that long, this long. What about

Carolyn Cochrane 14:17

like stepping on a rusty nail or something that too. And then, yes, you'd have to go get shots. And the

Kristin Nilsen 14:24

needle was this long. The needle is always this long. So I asked the author of the book, her name is Anne ilvasaker, if she'd like to give us a comment for this episode. And she was so excited, because we're talking about something, that she really cares about it. She cares enough about her childhood neighborhood outside time that she wrote a whole book about it, and she said this in part, I grew up on a Minneapolis block with an alley. The Alley was a kid world, especially in summer. And yeah, me too, totally. I grew up on an alley too. She is speaking the truth. She says my novel one ally summer is loosely based on that. Alley. It was the meeting place, the hub. I remember lots of foot races, particularly when somebody got new tennies.

Carolyn Cochrane 15:11

You're gonna test out those? Denny, yes,

Kristin Nilsen 15:13

and especially that. She says tennies because I never heard the word tennies until I moved to Minnesota, and people were talking about tennies like, I don't know what you're saying. I don't know. She says hours of horse and pig at the basketball hoop on my friend's garage. And most of all, and I'm not gonna say what she says, most of all, because it will play an important part in something coming up ahead. But I'm just so excited to have this book, because it is, it's written for children, but it speaks to us as a generation. Yeah,

Michelle Newman 15:39

we'll put that listeners. We will get the link to that in our Weekly Reader this week, I'm excited to order it,

Kristin Nilsen 15:46

and we're going to put it in our bookshop.org, for sure. Store, yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 15:50

yes, yes. We are. Those memories are so fun to think about. I mean, I can see why she wrote a whole book about it. I mean, there's so many levels to those experiences. Most of my neighborhood games were played in Houston, and here's what I remember, in terms of how, like tactile this experience was, beyond just the games, but it would be so hot and humid in Houston, and so I just remember how sticky I would be. And on top of that, we had mosquitoes were everywhere. So we also had to get doused with off before we went outside to play at night, because that's when the mosquitoes came out. Was at night, and so you were sticky, and that smell, oh yes, now I think they have, you know, deep wood scent and unscented, yeah, there was just one chemical, yeah, yes. And was just everywhere. And, you know, mom would say, close your eyes. Maybe I did, but you know, you were breathing that in, yeah, and that reminded me, then of the mosquito trucks. So I don't know if, Michelle, if you can relate to this, but there would be these big fumigator trucks that would come out right at dusk, and they would spray. And I kind of forgotten about that until I read a comment that one of our followers sent us, and I just want to read it to you, because this was so hoosker doing. She said, the kids in my central New Jersey neighborhood used to all get on their bikes, and right after the bug man, that's capital letters, when he would come around the neighborhood spraying his mosquito spray. And then in parentheses, she said, facts, our mother used to close the front door and close the window so the bug spray wouldn't get in the house, but never thought to tell her children not to ride our bicycles behind the cloud of toxic chemical that was being admitted into the neighborhood. Oh, my god,

Michelle Newman 17:33

yeah, it's just basically spraying carcinogens right in their mouth, right in their mouth. And

Carolyn Cochrane 17:37

then the best part was a response that another follower gave to Gail. So Gail D 88 was the woman who played bug man. But then Laura Lulu 67 responded with funny. I had to share your bug spray story with my husband, as I've heard him talk for years about kids in his Memphis neighborhood doing the same thing. Got to admit that I wasn't sure I believed him. It sounded way too far out. You have vindicated him.

Kristin Nilsen 18:06

You're welcome. I

Michelle Newman 18:07

do remember basically getting dunked and off. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 18:10

yes, but no sunscreen ever. No sunscreen, just bug spray, yeah, I

Michelle Newman 18:16

just remember, for me, yes, all the games that we're about to talk about on this list, I think that most of them I played at one point or the other, but for me, make believe games were my jam. Some of my earlier memories of neighborhood games would be when I was in about second grade, and we lived in a townhouse, and we had this big rock kind of in the middle, like of the cul de sac, and it was just a big rock, but it was like they made the thing around it, the road went around it. And we called it Ellie font, because it was supposed to be like an elephant, and it was le font, and we climbed it. And it was like, Who could ever get to the top of Ellie font? Basically it was like, in my memory, it was, you know, 50 feet high. And if you and I could try, and I knew where to put my fingers. It was like our 1975 version of, you know, rock climbing, right, right, vertical endeavors. We had so much fun playing different games, like all the neighborhood kids would gather at Ellie font, my sister recently went back there, and she sent me a picture. Elephant is still there. And the neighborhood, because it's a rock, you guys, it's probably 10 feet tall

Kristin Nilsen 19:21

at most. And I bet it was bass. I'm sure that was bass.

Michelle Newman 19:24

I'm sure it was but that's my thing. And then things like in third grade, making up dances with my sister and her best friend Penny. Now understand they were like big sixth graders, so but they included me. Longtime listeners might remember this is where my choreography for that's rock and roll came from. So we always did dances. This is the neighborhood. We would all get together and make up. We would do talent shows. That's where I would sing, like Barbra Streisand songs and things. But that would that would comprise our play, right? We would all be like, planning it and working. We painted rocks and sold rocks. We did that kind of stuff. We went door to door. You know, we were door to. Were rock salesmen. We did

Kristin Nilsen 20:01

that too. We sold rocks. Did you really? Yes, I think we sold like two we probably spent all day knocking on doors and sold two rocks. So you have make believe games, but then they're also made up games, and we had one that we called NIMBY. So this is not based on a movie or a TV show or a book. This is a game, yeah, and it's called NIMBY, which involved a badminton net strung up between two trees, and as many tennis rackets as you could rustle up in the neighborhood, and a bouncy plastic ball, like the like the kind that you would get at the grocery store. They'd be up there have a big bin, yep. And they might have, like, they might be in fun colors. They might have swirls on them, or stars or something like that. And so basically, we were playing badminton with tennis rackets and a playground ball. That sounds so fun right now, I would do that. But we named it right it was. We thought it was something quite profound. It was important enough that we named it NIMBY. And speaking of tennis, you guys, for how many hours of your childhood did you spend hitting a tennis ball against the garage? Yep, oh

Carolyn Cochrane 21:04

yes. I can't imagine how many hours. And I would narrate in my head that I was like Chris Evert, and so I would the crowd would be going, and I'd be hitting it back. And then, you know, I would jump up and down when I'm in my imagination had just won, you know, the US? Oh, yeah, exactly, so I because remember, like we just we knew who Chris Everett was we? Yeah, Martina never told that. We knew Billie Jean King

Kristin Nilsen 21:31

during Borg and his headband. I love your morgue still. Connors, yeah, and the Van Patten kid. Was it Vince? Was he a tennis player?

Carolyn Cochrane 21:41

Do you know we follow him now? No excuse me, he was ranked. He was a big deal, and now we follow him on Instagram. Vince, if you're listening, yes, we do follow you. We love

Kristin Nilsen 21:53

your headband. Vince, we love it. I just puka shell necklace. Yeah, he

Carolyn Cochrane 21:58

still, I think kind of wears a necklace, and I think he wears a headband. He is a big pickleball player. Of course he does now, and he'll be like in a chair, but we're out at whatever Culver City courts. Come on out. We've got a beer truck. We've got a food truck. It's pickleball all night. He does that. He's also a professional gambler. Wow, oh yeah. So he didn't stick. I don't doesn't appear to be that he stuck with the acting, but he did. Just a couple months ago, he had to get near he had knee replacement surgery, and so we had to, like, follow him through his rehab. And when was he gonna get back on the pickleball court,

Kristin Nilsen 22:35

not only tennis court, but on the Yeah, oh my god. I just think about like the thunk, thunk. I'm going back to the garage door now, because it wasn't the side of the house, it wasn't a wall, it was the garage door, and your garage is hollow, so it would be thunk, thunk, thunk, and my mom would be like, my god, yes, yes. Stop it with the thunking. There's so much about this that is summer too, because I remember so many of these memories are more indelible in summertime, because you just couldn't believe how late it was. The whole idea of it staying light late, it felt like daytime, but dinner was hours ago, and you just couldn't believe it. And every minute was a minute your mom wasn't calling you to come home. It was like stolen time. There was so much more play time because of that. Yes, and I loved

Carolyn Cochrane 23:24

the fact that I was allowed to play after dinner, because during the school year, once we had dinner, like doors were shut, everything was done. You couldn't go to a friend's house to watch a TV show. You couldn't play outside, but it was such a hard and fast rule in my house that summertime and playing outside after dinner was such a treat, and this, yeah, little snippet of time within a year that that was allowed, and it was, it was everything. I

Michelle Newman 23:50

want to ask you guys how your mom's called you in, because my mom had this bell, and it, it's just a little brass Bell, but it's loud and clink, clink, clink, clink, and all the neighborhood kids gathered kind of in front of where our house was, but that bell would start ringing, and it would just be so funny, because all the neighbors kind of then would know it's time to go home, because nobody else really had, you'd hear them calling their names. But my mom had this bell, and she would just put her hand out the door and ring it, and people would be like, Oh, Melanie and Michelle, you guys have to go home. That's for everybody. And then they would know that, oh, I guess we should. It's probably time for us all to go home. And when I was just visiting my sister, she in another room, and she just stuck her hand in the door and rang the bell. And I was, Oh, my God. She goes, I've got our bell. I know she has it. So it was kind of a fun sound to hear again. We

Kristin Nilsen 24:40

actually had a bell that was adhered installed. I needed the right word on our house. There was a bell on the house. Ours was a clang, Clang, Clang, Clang, Clang, yeah. But everybody in our neighborhood had their own sound, so it was sort of like a coordinated thing. So ours was the clang, Clang, Clang, clang. Somebody had the whistle that went, do you. No. And I just remember Clem Chase going out with his beard with his little whistle going that meant that Anne and Katie had to go home. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 25:09

the memory that's very clear for how I got told to go home. My sister would have to come get me, and my mom would say, probably to my sister Ronnie, go outside and tell Carolyn it's time to go home. So I would see her coming, and she'd be like, in front of everyone, Carolyn, and I would be like, Okay, I'm coming.

Michelle Newman 25:30

No, she said, Now you didn't let Ronnie play with you

Carolyn Cochrane 25:33

guys. Maybe I was allowed to stay out until nine, but she had to come in at eight or something like that. Come in for her bath. Yeah, probably, yeah, probably, because now I'm thinking, I hope we took baths after those nights of being doused.

Kristin Nilsen 25:46

No, no, no, we didn't our sheets with your off, Deep Woods off. I'm probably

Michelle Newman 25:51

still protected against mosquitoes to this day for how much off I absorbed.

Kristin Nilsen 25:59

And nobody said a word. I remember getting in, getting in bed and like, getting a whiff of deep woods off when I would like pull the covers over me. Yes, yes. Nobody said a word. We

Speaker 2 26:10

filled this tent with 10,000 hungry mosquitoes and biting flies. But they're not biting me. I'm using deep woods off. It repels even the toughest mosquitoes and biting flies. Well,

Carolyn Cochrane 26:23

as you can imagine, when we asked our listeners and our followers to tell us what their favorite neighborhood games were, we got a ton, and I mean, a ton of comments, hundreds. Okay, you guys, so this obviously meant a lot to a lot of us, and it was so fun reading the comments, because again, stuff that we thought we were the only person in the world, like, or our little neighborhood was the only place that they played NIMBY, and then all of a sudden someone's like, we played NIMBY, oh my god, Arkansas. And so I loved coming across those moments, kind of like the bug man, that these people are like, Oh my gosh, me too. And

Kristin Nilsen 27:02

it's just another example of how we had a shared childhood. Even if we didn't live in the same house or the same city or the same region of the country, we still had a shared childhood.

Carolyn Cochrane 27:13

Yes. And so we took all those comments, and guess what? You guys, Carolyn did the math. Oh, so I know it was, it's a little scary. I would not like bet my life on these results.

Michelle Newman 27:24

Were there any ties? Oh, there are a

Carolyn Cochrane 27:28

couple. Yes. So we're gonna count down the top 10, pop culture, Preservation Society, neighborhood games from the Gen X era. Woo hoo. At number 10, we have,

Unknown Speaker 27:41

yes, of

Kristin Nilsen 27:43

course, yeah. Let's hear

Michelle Newman 27:44

it for the tie,

Carolyn Cochrane 27:46

a tie between flashlight tag and kickball.

Michelle Newman 27:49

I just wonder where you have enough room in a neighborhood, I guess if you have, like, a field nearby, or cul de sac, oh, the street, yeah, the sack, of course, yeah, it

Carolyn Cochrane 28:00

went and then you all had to spread, so, yeah, we played in the street, but, like, I remember a light post would be like first base, yeah, you know, and then you'd have something in the for second, then there'd be, like, a mailbox for third, and you'd have something for home.

Kristin Nilsen 28:13

And if you lived in a new neighborhood, like I did several times, where I had a new house and next door to me was a vacant lot, yes, where a house had not gone on

Carolyn Cochrane 28:23

vacant lots. So great. But what was funny was I hadn't even thought about the yelling car thing. You know, probably in, I don't know, last time I yelled car, probably 40 something years ago. Kristen schwarc, one of our followers, said we lived on a cul de sac so we could play softball, kickball in the court, and we had basis set up and would yell car at the top of our lungs, should someone pull into the court, and we'd scatter like cockroaches exposed to light. As soon as I read that, it was just like, again, who screwed dude? Because I could hear the car and everybody scattering. It's just, it's such a visual, and

Kristin Nilsen 29:00

nobody was scared, and our parents didn't think we were getting hit by cars.

Carolyn Cochrane 29:04

And another memory from kickball or wiffle ball, or any of those games that you played where you had for second, third base and home run, was this little fact that I had forgotten, that Chrissy Hayes reminded us of. She loved playing kickball in either a small field or a yard. They used rocks or tree stumps as bases. And ghost runners. Do you guys remember ghost run? Ghost runners? Like, if someone had to go to dinner or something, what are you going to do? There was, like a ghost on base, like

Michelle Newman 29:33

a real ghost, like, so, like, there's

Carolyn Cochrane 29:36

ghost runner, and then let's say they're on first, like

Michelle Newman 29:40

a pinch hitter or something, right? Like someone, basically, it's not a real

Carolyn Cochrane 29:44

well here, I thought I'd be hoosker doing you guys, and you never had ghost runners. Well, no, well, a lot of people had ghost runners. And it was basically when you either didn't have enough people on your team or someone had to, like, I said, Go home early or go to dinner. And it was just this pretend person. Person that would move along the basis, so an invisible

Kristin Nilsen 30:02

person? Yeah, okay. And so how do you know if they get to

Carolyn Cochrane 30:06

base? You just let them kind of get to the base, except, like, let's say no,

Michelle Newman 30:11

it's a real person, right? No, it's not. It's really a ghost.

Carolyn Cochrane 30:18

I'm so confused. How do

Kristin Nilsen 30:20

you agree? How do you agree? Do you agree? Because

Carolyn Cochrane 30:22

it's the rules of ghost running, universal rules. Do you just

Michelle Newman 30:27

watch it as it runs, and everybody's heads going in different Okay, so

Carolyn Cochrane 30:31

let's say I hit the ball and I run, and I run to first, but then I have to go home, or maybe I have to go to the back of our rotation, because we don't have enough people to bat. And so you say ghost runner. And so there's a ghost runner on first base. Now the next person comes up and they hit it. Now the ghost runner runs

Michelle Newman 30:48

second base. How do you make it or not? Well, I can you get them out? And

Carolyn Cochrane 30:52

I think this was an agreed upon rule, yeah. I think if you could get it to the second base person before the first base runner got to first base that that could count. If that makes sense,

Kristin Nilsen 31:04

then that would count that the ghost Runner was ours. So a

Michelle Newman 31:07

ghost runner runs faster?

Carolyn Cochrane 31:10

Well, you know what you had to negotiate. How do you know how fast a ghost runs? I want Chrissy. Chrissy Hayes, if you're Yeah, let us know. Chris, please let us know what your ghost runner rules were, or anyone else listening? Because I ghost runners came up a few times.

Michelle Newman 31:25

Well, also because Chrissy Hayes says the ghost runners always started fights. So that makes sense, because I would be going, No way, my the ghost, our ghost is safe, and the other team would be like, No, I got your ghost out. I'd be like proven.

Unknown Speaker 31:42

I pray to no good

Carolyn Cochrane 31:45

flashlight tag was our other tie at number 10, and just tag in general, like flashlight tag, obviously, a particular one. Did you guys play flashlight tag? Yes, I'm sure I

Kristin Nilsen 31:57

never knew. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I ran around a lot. Well,

Carolyn Cochrane 32:02

it's like you tagged, but by shining a light on someone so you didn't have to actually physically touch them like you would. And maybe some of the other tagging feel like that.

Michelle Newman 32:10

One started a lot of fights too, though, because it's like, no, it didn't touch me. You know, you always had those kids in the neighborhood that would never, ever, ever, like, succumb to being right tat, never, never. There was always an excuse. Hate those kids who

Kristin Nilsen 32:28

did they turn into as adults? Don't you wonder I have cheaters.

Michelle Newman 32:31

I have a couple ideas, yeah, oh,

Carolyn Cochrane 32:34

I there's one name I could say, but I won't say it out loud. And I would like, if anyone knows blah, blah, blah, blah, please let me know what they're doing today. I would love that. I would love that,

Kristin Nilsen 32:43

because I want to see if it lines up. Are they still cheaters, or they

Carolyn Cochrane 32:47

lied? They would just were they about things? Yes,

Kristin Nilsen 32:51

oh my god. Or did you ever have those kids, if they were losing the game, they'd be like, you want to start over?

Unknown Speaker 32:57

Yes, yep, no, I'm not

Kristin Nilsen 32:59

starting over just because you're losing No, all right, moving on in our countdown. In the number nine position, I fought Carolyn for this one because originally she gave me a different game. I'm like, No, I need this one because this was my favorite game. I loved it so much. In our number nine position is statues, or as we called it statue maker. We played statue maker. I think I loved statue maker because it was a little bit theatrical, it was a little bit physical, it was a little bit harrowing, a little scary, and it was always hilarious. And if you don't remember statue maker, here is how it's played. It's complicated. Everybody just stick with me. So one person is the statue maker, one person is the buyer, and everybody else gets to be a statue. And the statue maker makes the statues by grabbing your arm and swinging you around, possibly fast enough that you take flight. That's the goal, right? Launch you, and then they let you go. And he just, let's go. Just, let's go. And sometimes you flew across the yard. The position you land in is the position of the statue which you hold. You have to freeze like that, because you are a statue. And before the statue maker swings you around, they might ask you, salt pepper or red hot pepper. This was the speed at which always see Carolyn's face right now she is so she can't even make noise. Salt, pepper, red hot pepper,

yes. Salt, pepper, red hot pepper. So they're asking you, what speed Do you want to be swung around at? Please excuse the grammar on that sentence. So salt was moderate, Pepper was fast, and Red Hot Pepper was getting flung across the yard, and it was very I never said red hot pepper, never no depends on who this. Statue maker was too Yes, well, and the statue maker was generally one of the big kids, because they could lift you, they could fling you into the air. So after all of the statues are in place, then a rich old lady comes to the studio to pick out a statue to buy. This often involves accents, for sure, right? And you can't laugh because you're a statue. You have to freeze. And the statue maker might also explain to the rich old lady the significance of the statue or what it represents. And again, there's no laughing in their accents. So someone said they played this variation, and I think we did this too. Sometimes the statue maker could tap the statue on the head during his presentation, you could move, yes, and you could do a move of some kind, almost like a robot. Yeah. It could be related to his explanation of your significance, or it could just be something funny, completely random. Yes, the tap on the head and then, and hopefully, it would crack up the rich old lady. And then the statue stops moving when the statue maker, again, taps them on the head. And I remember part of the fun being that once the rich old lady has made her decision about which statue she's going to buy, then they would have to transport the statue into out to her car. So they'd be trying to pick you up, and you had to hold your position, yeah, and again, not laughing, because you're a statue and they're everybody's trying to pick you up and get you out to the car. I

Michelle Newman 36:25

remember one variation we had on this game was, if we didn't have a statue maker that could swing you, like, say, Kristen, you're a statue and I'm the statue maker, I could just walk up to you and grab your arms and be like, lay down. I could put you in the position that I thought was hilarious. Like, I might have, like, one of your legs in the air and one bent and one hand on your head, and so we did that a lot. Yeah, that was a top request. So fun. And you guys,

Carolyn Cochrane 36:50

you know what visual I just got when I was thinking about being swung around, and then you kind of land is when you'd get those grass stain like, like, kind of scrapes on your knees, but they were green. Yes, you had, like, kind of skidded through the grass, and so you weren't necessarily bleeding, but there were a bunch of scratches, and your knees were green. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 37:09

your knees were green.

Carolyn Cochrane 37:11

Knees, you guys think of all the different places we lived, like, so specific, like art dealers. And I just, I can't even explain how amazing, I guess, and wild. I think that that whole thing is,

Kristin Nilsen 37:30

I want to know how many people, okay, listeners. Let us know if you ever broke a bone playing statue maker. I want to know. Well,

Carolyn Cochrane 37:37

I can tell you we have at least one listener who broke a bone, Pam binkowski, told us that she played swinging statues all the time until a teenage girl swung me and broke both bones in my arm, and I was probably five at the time. Oh, broken bones. Oh no, I know, and I love

Kristin Nilsen 37:56

that. She calls it swinging statues.

Michelle Newman 37:58

I've never heard that be what we called it. That sounds familiar. Now, more than statue maker also Don't you know that not only does Pam have a memory of that, you know that teenage girl has never forgotten that either somebody

Kristin Nilsen 38:09

broke someone's arm. And

Carolyn Cochrane 38:11

Kimberly Lynn, another follower, responded to Pam's comment, and this is, again, what I love she has in all caps. OMG, I thought me and my cousins made up swinging statues. It was an actual game.

Michelle Newman 38:26

Here we are, all three of us, going swinging statues. What we called it?

Carolyn Cochrane 38:31

Yes, so, so fun, but yet dangerous.

Kristin Nilsen 38:35

Yeah, super dangerous. Tell the Tale, and nobody cared. Well, coming

Michelle Newman 38:38

in at number eight is specifically Charlie's Angels. Specifically

Kristin Nilsen 38:43

Charlie, Charlie's Okay, that's significant. I could

Carolyn Cochrane 38:49

not believe the amount of people that said Charlie's Angels as the official tallyer of these votes, you guys. I because I thought that I was maybe the only one who played it until, of course, we had our episode where we talked about Charlie's Angel. We all played it. You guys did, yes. But then, even then, I thought, well, you know, we're we're who we are. We have this podcast, right? Different. So I thought maybe it was just the three of us. Maybe a few more. It comes in at number eight. It does, yeah, believe it, wow.

Michelle Newman 39:17

I share with you some very Charlie's Angels specific comments in one second. But I wanted to share that some of the other TV inspired games that people did mention included emergency God. That would be a fun one to play, though, right? Yeah. And, of course, Land of the Lost. And we all talked about that when we talked with Wesley your you just

Kristin Nilsen 39:35

run behind you and run, yeah, we

Michelle Newman 39:40

Mel's diner. Like, how fun is that I would just always be like, Vera exploding the straws, you know, Battlestar Galactica Nancy Drew. And this last one, my sister and I played all the time, Little House on the Prairie. Oh, we played that all the time. Yeah, a couple of our LA. Listeners commented with more performance based approach. Jen Wittes said, performing grease. We can't neglect to mention that, because that is something I know the three of us all did, and probably 90% of our listeners and another follower commented Donnie and Marie. And I believe Kristen had a good story in our Donnie and Marie episode about that, but yeah, we used to play that all the time. I would like to be, I think I took all the roles on. I was also the ice angels, and then I was Donnie and Marie. And I will say that, you know, we're talking about neighborhood games a lot, but I don't think we should neglect to mention that people that might have lived not in a neighborhood, right? You had a lot of people that lived out in rural areas, and so you just really, you played with your siblings, siblings that did. That does mean you played a lot of make believe. And even though Charlie's Angels, you have three, that doesn't mean two people can't cover ghost runner,

Kristin Nilsen 40:56

ghost angels, Angel, ghost Bosley,

Michelle Newman 40:58

ghost, Bosley, ghost, Charlie. So I want to read share some of the really fun comments we got. Erica Johnson says my cousins and I played Charlie's Angels, pretending to catch bad guys and use guns. I was always Sabrina by default, because they would fight over who would be Kelly or Jill. Always, you know, Sabrina. Come on. There's, I know, it seems like I want to be Sabrina, right? It seems like people didn't want to be Sabrina. It's always third choice. And our friend Shane 87 ragged Tiger, says Charlie's Angels, I was always Bosley. But then he makes sure to have like a footnote that says, while secretly seething with envy, I could ride the skateboard better than any of those girls. But because he was the he was the boy, he has to be Bosley. Susan Carolyn Strickland says, My friends and I also played Charlie's Angels. We would make up a case, and then would hide behind the trees and run around the yard to catch whoever was the designated bad guy. So basically, a little bit of hide and seek, plus tag being the bad guy was fun. We always had to have a long discussion over who was which Angel. And of course, we did the stance with the guns. Yep, the pose. Yeah, did you guys? You said you always wanted to be Sabrina and and Carolyn, if I remember correctly, you were Kelly. She wanted to be, wanted to be Kelly. That's right, that's right. I

Carolyn Cochrane 42:17

had to be Farah

Unknown Speaker 42:21

or Carolyn. I did, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 42:22

I didn't want to be

Michelle Newman 42:24

but yeah, I bet there was always, like, some sort of negotiation involved, right?

Kristin Nilsen 42:28

Oh, with Charlie's Angels. I mean, I think 50% of the game was the negotiation that came first of who was going to be, who has everyone had their favorites, and

Michelle Newman 42:36

if you could still be friends after that negotiation was over, then great, you could still play the game. But

Carolyn Cochrane 42:40

was there even a negotiation there wasn't in my neighborhood? Yeah, you were told, yeah, that's exactly

Kristin Nilsen 42:45

right, because Kelly had to be Kelly, right. Wasn't your neighbor named Kelly? That's right. That's right. End of discussion.

Michelle Newman 42:51

My sister always wanted to be Sabrina. My sister even had a poster of Sabrina, like Kate Jackson as Sabrina. You guys can picture it. She's wearing like, a white vest and white pants, yes, and like the pointy collar, and she kind of has the little page boy shag. My sister had that poster in her room she loved, I want about K Jackson, wow. Okay. And then some other comments about other make believe games that we just loved, honey, West, 1117, says we played Mel Steiner and cooked food for each other using dirt, rocks and hose water. You guys, that is pure summer fun. Yeah, it's making mud pies, yeah, with a little twigs and the grass you would put on for like the topping. Laura Lulu 67 says mandatory concerts performed on back porches for our hapless family members to such classics as Don't cry out loud. Can you imagine the emotion they put in? Oh my God, and the night the lights went out in Georgia, dramatic, I don't know about you guys, but when my own kids would put on these shows for us, we would always be like, okay, hold on. We have to go get a bottle of wine, because there was no way we could get through those without and

Kristin Nilsen 44:00

they never end, because you never planned an ending. And I remember my parents would would be like, they'd start to clap, like they were just telling us, like, Oh, it's over. It's over. Now, exactly, we're not done. Oh yes, it is yes, it is clapping. I

Carolyn Cochrane 44:14

read a comment from one of our followers, Bianca quill Hair Studio, whoa, Bianca, are you a hairdresser? I'm not sure. But anyway, she said we played kiss Okay, in quotation marks, meaning we would act like we were members of Kiss and air guitar or drum etc, and stomp around while blasting our kiss record.

Michelle Newman 44:36

Did they draw on their faces? I felt really painted their faces. She didn't

Carolyn Cochrane 44:40

say whether or not so Bianca, we would love to know, yes, yeah, I don't know. All Out with the

Kristin Nilsen 44:46

they took mom's makeup and they put all that, yeah, they put on, I really and then they got in trouble because they didn't ask to use mom's mom's makeup, yeah, used

Michelle Newman 44:53

all her black eyeliner to make your cat whiskers, yeah, okay, makeup. Whisperer, I love this color. Comment so much. I remember playing Donnie and Marie in my driveway. I was Marie and my brother's inflatable weeble, like, punching bag was Donnie.

Kristin Nilsen 45:09

Oh, I know they're like, I had a Bozo the Clown one, yeah, yes, and you hit it. We

Carolyn Cochrane 45:13

had a Batman one, and I just got Husker dude remembering that I would play, maybe that it was also Donnie, but in a different way.

Kristin Nilsen 45:25

Yeah, Carolyn, getting creative. I kissed

Carolyn Cochrane 45:30

that thing, but it never could like

Kristin Nilsen 45:34

you're lying down.

Carolyn Cochrane 45:37

It would just flip up

Kristin Nilsen 45:39

practicing making out with Batman

Michelle Newman 45:42

and LMA 114 says we would have a parade every Saturday with bike tricks, baton twirling and a record player. And that just reminded me of our neighborhood talent shows too. Yeah, I love that.

Carolyn Cochrane 45:53

That was one of the places to show our baton twirling skills. Yeah. Where else are

Kristin Nilsen 45:57

you gonna do it? I know I've shared this before in an episode. I can't remember which one we would play seven alone. Which was, I can't remember if it was a movie, yes. Well, there was a novelization that you could get through the Scholastic order, and it had the photo, but it came from TV, and I think it was on Disney, or maybe it was a made for TV movie. And at one point in the episode, I said it was a knockoff of Little House on the Prairie, and we got a comment where she was like, No, it wasn't a knockoff. She felt. She had very strong feelings about seven alone, and she still had her novelization from the Scholastic Book Fair. It was so jealous, but it was basically a covered wagon drama. And so we would, I remember, like creating a covered wagon, but only in our minds, and we had something to climb up on, because, of course, when you're in a covered wagon, you're up high, and then somebody's behind you, down low, and then there are the bad guys maybe down at the front of you. And it feels like we were climbing up on like elephant, like a big rock, but I can't remember what it was we were climbing up on. And if you were lucky, you still had your bonnet from when you did the second grade play, and you could wear your bonnet up on the rock when you're sitting on the covered wagon.

Michelle Newman 47:06

See the make believe games are the best, aren't they? Yeah, they

Kristin Nilsen 47:09

really are. And if you're playing seven alone, or you're playing Narnia, there's always there's a variety of siblings, and so there are always people in the neighborhood that you could include. There's always a little kid, there's always an older brother, and then all the ones in between. It's sort of like playing Brady Bunch. There was room for everybody to be involved, because somebody has to be Cindy, so that's going to be your little sister who's in kindergarten, and then it has to be a Greg. So everybody is involved.

Speaker 1 47:35

Here's the story of a lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls, all of them had hair of gold, like their mother. Okay,

Carolyn Cochrane 47:47

guess what? Everybody number seven tie, another tie, another tie. At number seven, first was Mother May I love. Oh yeah,

Michelle Newman 47:58

Mother May i Yes.

Carolyn Cochrane 47:59

And you know, I forgot, I mean, I remember the game, but then when I was rereading the rules getting ready for this, I had totally forgotten some aspects of it, like, I guess I'd forgotten that you as the mother, you kind of faced away from the people, you know the people were behind you. Tell me if it's Mother, may I or a different game where you would tell the person as the mother what kind of steps to take. So if they Oh yes, yes, and you would say, you can take three scissor steps. Did

Michelle Newman 48:31

you go sideways and you crisscross your steps? And then they'll say, Mother, may I and I loved being the mother. And I'd go, No, you may not. You can take four scissor steps, and should go, Mother May. And I go, yes, you may, yeah. I think the reason you have to turn around is probably because you can't play favorites, right? Because you would say, if you're like Carolyn, you can take 12 giant steps, and Carolyn's almost to me and Kristen's back there, like, the fuck. Why? So I'd be like, Kristen, you can take seven bunny hops and mother, man, I'd say, yes, you may. And all of a sudden, you know, she hops like, past Carolyn. And then I'm like, I don't want Carolyn to win, so I'm gonna keep going with Julie. All right,

Carolyn Cochrane 49:14

then we have ghost in the graveyard. Is our other game coming in at number seven. Did you guys play Ghost in the grave? I wanted to so

Kristin Nilsen 49:24

badly. I really, really wanted to. I would play it today. Every Halloween, I say to either my husband or my child, who will go to the graveyard with me, and nobody cares. Nobody will go to the graveyard with me.

Carolyn Cochrane 49:36

You know what our follower Jenny seek. Not only did she play Ghost in the graveyard. She did it in the actual local cemeteries. Can you imagine? Yes,

Michelle Newman 49:45

no, I would never, oh no. I would never do that. Oh my gosh. So

Carolyn Cochrane 49:50

you have a designated area, kind of like a home base, maybe, like you're yelling ghoul, because if they you know, you're trying to touch it, and they're like, base face, um. And you have to return to it before getting tagged by the ghost. So there's somebody that is the ghost, and then you are the then there are ghost hunters. So I think you're trying to find the ghost, but you don't want him to tag you before you reach the safe zone. Does that make sense till you reach base? Yeah, until you reach base, it

Michelle Newman 50:20

sounds a little bit like all those, like, kick the can type games and stuff, yeah, yeah. It's

Carolyn Cochrane 50:24

all variations on a theme. But I think once you put the word ghost and graveyard in there, it takes on a whole different kind of feel. And plus this, these would be ones you pay played in, not at night once the Oh, yes,

Kristin Nilsen 50:37

that's why I came on, this would be, yeah, this is a nighttime game. That's why they're a ghost and kind of like flashlight. Like flashlight, yeah, that kind of thing, yes, okay, in our number six spot, this is so old school I can hardly stand it, but it also makes me super happy. The sixth most popular neighborhood game in the PCPs top 10 countdown is hopscotch. So simple, yes, so basic, yes. But you guys, I'll be honest, I never knew how to play hopscotch. Not that I played it. I definitely played it. I did not know what I was doing. He was like, hop, hop, put your feet down. You want the rock, and then you gotta pick the rock up. Yeah, pick up the rock on one foot, on one foot, two foot, two feet, one foot. But I am just basically, I'm doing a dance. I don't know what the goal is. I don't know what I'm trying to do. And I think the most important part of hopscotch was drawing the configuration on the sidewalk that could take days, and you might never even get to the plank. And that was fine, sure. Hopscotch, you just got to make it pretty, like a block. You got to make it pretty. It pretty. And this is so depressing. So because I'm like shit, I don't know how to play hopscotch, so I googled it, and this is what comes up. Hopscotch, a programming app for kids to learn to code. Oh, I know. I was so sad. I was so sad. I just

Michelle Newman 51:59

making a note for myself to get some sidewalk chalk. So I was on a walk one time, like last summer, and I'm just walking along and on the sidewalk in front of someone's house. They had just drawn a hopscotch thing. And of course, I see it, so I'm gonna do the hopscotch and I thought, I kind of love that idea. Just in front of my house, just draw a hopscotch thing. So when people are on walks, adults too, you don't have the raw you don't have to do it. You don't have to do it. You don't have to know the rules. Just do the one foot two foot, one foot, two foot, one foot, one foot, two foot one you know, whatever. You can make it however you want. And so I think let's all do that. Let's just, if you live in a neighborhood, just draw hopscotch

Kristin Nilsen 52:36

and just see how many people stop and do it. Just sit by your window and watch. That could be a Saturday afternoon. I'm gonna see, I'm totally doing that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna watch. How many people do it.

Michelle Newman 52:44

But wouldn't it be interesting to take a tally? Actually, we should do, yes, let's do a tally.

Kristin Nilsen 52:49

You know, what's interesting, though, is the kids coming by. May not know how to play hopscotch. Oh, no. But the people our age will. This will be an interesting experiment. We're gonna write down what generation they are, you know, just from eyeballing it, yeah, and I bet a lot. I love that. Yeah,

Michelle Newman 53:05

okay, I say at our next PCPs listener get together, Carolyn, I'd love for you to teach us hopscotch. And that could just be something people do off on the side. I love

Carolyn Cochrane 53:14

it. Yeah, there's some cardio involved, and there's balancing involved and all of that. So, yeah, I love a good hopscotch. I wonder how it got its name. I don't know. Well,

Kristin Nilsen 53:22

there's hopping on one foot

Michelle Newman 53:24

and drinking scotch.

Kristin Nilsen 53:26

I know that is a neighborhood game. Yes, now you're talking you can't spill your Scotch. When you go down to get your rock, you're on one foot. Don't spill your Scotch. Go down, get your rock.

Michelle Newman 53:35

I love this idea. Okay,

Carolyn Cochrane 53:38

Coming at number five is red light, red light, green light, green light, green light, yellow light, oh,

Kristin Nilsen 53:45

yellow light,

Michelle Newman 53:46

you have to go, Okay, you have to, like, walk. So

Carolyn Cochrane 53:51

I wanted to do a little history on where does this come from. Like, you know, is there an origin of red light, green light, and there were some different names of it, and they think maybe Great Britain, but the version that grace my daughter is most familiar with, and the one that a lot of people are would be the Korean version, called the magongwa flower, has bloomed now. You guys, the red light green light was featured prominently in the Netflix series, squid game. Oh, that's what the game is. As Grace explained to me, if you, like, went when you weren't supposed to, and that kind of thing you got shot. I never watched squid game. That's what. That's why it's so scary and awful. But it has a resurgence,

Michelle Newman 54:41

kind of yes, you does. Like, if you went like, if you did green light, when they red light, you got shot dead. Yes, I'm sorry I'm laughing because they're dead people. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 54:53

there are dead people. And it really ruins the game, the childhood game. Now, when we're talking about it, like, I. It

Kristin Nilsen 55:00

does ruin the game if somebody gets shot.

Michelle Newman 55:04

Okay, well, coming in at number four is you're just tried and true. Everyone your basic hide and seek. Now, hide and go seek, hide and go seek, hide and go seek. Hide and go seek is what we used to call it all the time, which is pretty self explanatory. Now there are, as we know, a lot of variations. We've already talked about flashlight tag, our favorite and our family was sardines. Did you guys ever play sardines? But I don't know anything about the greatest thing to play at, like a slumber party. It's so fun. So basically, one person, the person who's it, goes and hides. So let's say Kristen, you're it, and you go hide in the closet, right? I know, I know. And now everybody else starts looking for you and but you're silent, and if someone opens that closet door and sees you, they just quietly get in. They don't yell, I found it. They just quietly get in and hide with you. So basically, you're all squishing into the closet, or you're in the bathtub with the shower curtain closed, and eventually the person opens the shower curtain and there's 12 people, like, if it's at a slumber party, they're all squished in there. It's

Kristin Nilsen 56:08

really fun. Okay, I would play that right now. That sounds super fun. Well, I

Michelle Newman 56:12

wanted to research and try to find the origins of hide and seek, hide and go seek. But instead, I got sidetracked when I saw that there from 2010 to 2017 there was a hide and seek World Championship. It was an international competition that was held the last one was in 2018 It was held annually in cansano, Italy, which is a ghost town, and it's basically the Italian version of hide and seek is called nascandino. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. Participants had to be 18. Basically, it's hilarious. If you go on like YouTube and just watch, and all the teams would like dress in different things, and they would just scatter, you know, and then they would all be hiding in, like the woods and everything. The winning team was awarded the Golden fig leaf, which was a symbol of hiding from the story of Adam Cole. Now, when I Googled something about which hide and seek, I don't know, I was trying to find out a little more information. And you know how when you type something in the Google box and all the most commonly asked questions come up underneath it, the first most commonly asked question that people ask is which Hide and Seek world champion was found dead. Oh god. Oh, you guys, if you're watching this, I used to just, I almost just made Carolyn choke. She was drinking something when I said that, yes, yes. So of course, I clicked it, oh my god. And here's what it said. I have to say this without laughing. But you guys, his reactions are you guys your faces, right?

Carolyn Cochrane 57:44

This was in 2018 and why they don't have it anymore.

Kristin Nilsen 57:47

Yeah, that and putting put an end to the

Michelle Newman 57:50

game. This answer was from September 30, 2018 so maybe it says, world, I have to try to read it like a newscaster, because laugh, because died. World, Hide and Seek champion Darren Hayes. He's champion world Hide and Seek champion. Darren Hayes has been found dead in a wardrobe.

Kristin Nilsen 58:09

Oh, my God. He was playing Narnia Police

Michelle Newman 58:11

have confirmed. Oh, Officer saved. Mr. Hayes 37 disappeared two weeks ago while training for the next World Championships. Oh, my God,

Kristin Nilsen 58:21

wait. How do you train? You just go find, just go hide. I

Michelle Newman 58:26

guess, I'm guessing his whole team was like, I don't, well, let's think about it. How do you train for hide and seek? You get your team together and you say, Let's go play hide and seek. I'm training right now. And he went into that, where's Christian? Where'd she go? Oh, there she earlier. Here, host training. He was training, and he was obviously the previous champion, and he went and hid it in a wardrobe. I could have dug deeper, but I didn't have time. It's probably

Kristin Nilsen 58:51

like, that's PSA, where somebody hid in a refrigerator and they suffocated. Well,

Michelle Newman 58:55

here I'm gonna tell you right now from the Suffolk Gazette, world Hide and Seek champion found dead in wardrobe. Officers say Mr. Hayes disappeared two weeks ago while training for the next World Championships. They say he was practicing with members of his family, but he was so good they were unable to find him. Spokeswoman Lorraine Fisher said officers were called to an address and Haverhill Suffolk after the discovery of a man's body in a wardrobe. Unfortunately, Darren hazely undiscovered for weeks while training for the hide and seek World Championships, his family had looked under the bed, behind the curtains and even behind the doors, but none of them had thought to check the wardrobe. It's believed that Mr. Hayes's family got bored and stopped looking for him for after four hours. Tragically, he died from dehydration and was only found when his wife Eleanor went to hang out.

Carolyn Cochrane 59:52

Onion Gazette is like the onion.

Michelle Newman 59:57

It's awfully sad, says Mr. Says. Mrs. Hayes, but he was so good at hiding that none of us thought to check in the wardrobe. But it's how he would have wanted to

Kristin Nilsen 1:00:07

go. He's the winner. He's the ultimate champion. He was, again, this has to be a joke, right? It has to be a joke. We're gonna tell you. If that's real checking, why wouldn't she check in the wardrobe? I don't understand my

Michelle Newman 1:00:19

question. My biggest clue that this is can't be true is that it was his family, and they just gave up, and then they just found weeks later, couldn't you bang on the wardrobe unless he's like, I don't want him to find I can do without water for another day. He's training. He's training. Yeah, I might have to go without water for three days next week. I mean, and was he found like in his own excrement?

Kristin Nilsen 1:00:46

Well, oh, no, this is what happened. He was preparing. He stopped drinking days previously so he wouldn't have to pee. Oh, and so he got in there dehydrated. Yes, he was planning it like just bring a Gatorade bottle with you.

Michelle Newman 1:01:01

He could have died within hours. We are like Charlie's Angels right now. Yes, we are solving the mystery of the world champion killer. You're welcome. Hayes family, yeah. So okay, so I do have a story to share, though, because this is, this is kind of an emotional story from Erin McInnis Douglas, one of our social media followers and listeners. And she said, evidently, one time, I played hide and seek with a school friend after school, at the school yard or our yard. I don't remember this particular day, but apparently she says it happened sometime in 1972 or 73 we must have been 10 or 11. So she says, fast forward, 40 years later, I had a family of my own, and we were living in Seattle, our old school landline phone rang, and when I answered, I was surprised to find it was my friend from way back when. So she says, After catching up with our lives and family stuff, she let me know that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and that she had something on her mind that had been bothering her for a long time, couldn't imagine what it could have been. Well, it turns out she remembered this particular day very well, and she said, Do you remember that day we were playing hide and seek? And Erin said, I don't recall. No. Next, she confessed that she had ditched me during the game and went home because she didn't want to play anymore. I truly felt bad that I hadn't remembered something that she had been haunted by for so many years. She must have felt that she needed to make amends before passing on. Her call touched me, and she was my first friend that I lost from our class of 1980 she reached out to like, she said, making amends and like, that's something that had just weighed heavy on her.

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:42

Ditching is a big deal, and we took it very seriously. That's like a capital offense if you're a child ditching somebody

Michelle Newman 1:02:49

I know, well, Erin, we're sorry for the loss of your friend. And also, thank you for sharing that story with us, because wow,

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:56

right now, think about all of those friends that you played with in your neighborhood. Where are those people right now? My neighborhood people, and these might be the people that you played our number three most popular game with our number three most popular game in our top 10 of neighborhood games according to the PCPs. I'm going to go back to our author of one ally, Summer, Anne Ilva soccer. She says, most of all, what I remember is kick the can. She says, I can't remember the rules exactly, and truthfully, I think there were a lot of gays where there were no rules and you just made them up and you pretended like I said that was settled law. And she says, But it involved an empty soup can set up right in the middle of the alley. One person was it, and the rest of us ran and hid. The point was to leave your hiding place while the IT person was looking for everyone, and to be the first one back to the can without getting caught. You won. If you were the one to kick the can, the noise of it would bring everyone back, getting to kick that can down the alley. Was exciting, of course, but I also remember the thrill of the hiding places, like sneaking into some forbidden yard of a neighbor without children, or the spooky dark under the untrimmed pine tree at the corner house, there was a call too to ollie, Ollie oxenfree, or something like that. I think that was when you were free to go sneak around to the can. I'm surprised this wasn't the number one. I'm kind of surprised we played. When I lived in Washington. We played kick the can all the time. And the way we played, we flattened a soda can. And so the person who was it like, when they were counting, they had to kick the can down to the to the street light and back. And that meant everybody would run and hide. But no, but she's right then that flattened, our flattened can stayed there. So when the person was going to look, if they found you, if they could see you, and you saw like, say, you know, Jason, is it? And he sees me behind the tree. He can run, and he can jump over the can and say, over the can. On Michelle, wow. But if I see that, Jason has seen me, it's a foot race, right? That also little Michelle's never gonna win, because if I get to the can. And before Jason, I'm gonna kick it, and then I'm safe. It was so fun. We loved it. We played it so many nights in the summer. It's not funny. I never knew how to play. I just pictured it was like, Leave It to Beaver time. And I thought you just did little like, kick the can down the alley. Yeah, I never played that, but

Carolyn Cochrane 1:05:14

it was just always referred to, whether it was in a ball or something like that. It was. And when I was asking Andy, Did you play any neighborhood games? He said the only one he could remember was kick the can. Yeah.

Michelle Newman 1:05:25

Isn't that interesting? I mean, never played, yeah. So can is like base, but you don't just touch it. You gotta kick it. You gotta kick

Kristin Nilsen 1:05:31

it, yeah. And I love how she says the noise of kicking the can is what brought everybody back. We didn't play kick the can, but we did play something we called shoe can, which was a pop can, as we would have said, Minnesota, or a soda can, and you stomp down on it with your foot. You lay it on its side, and you stomp down on it so that it curls around the sole of your shoe, and now you and it sticks to your shoe, so now it's like you're wearing tap shoes. Yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:05:55

I should

Michelle Newman 1:05:57

do that all the time. Wash our cans. Yeah, you

Carolyn Cochrane 1:05:59

know what we didn't have like soda cans very often. I'm thinking I must have done beer cans. Of

Kristin Nilsen 1:06:05

course you did. Of course you did, like

Carolyn Cochrane 1:06:09

Schlitz or whatever. Perhaps Blue Ribbon cans on my feet. Oh my gosh, I forgot

Kristin Nilsen 1:06:15

about chugged it quick and then I put it on my foot.

Michelle Newman 1:06:17

Yeah, we love to clomp around and beer cans and whatever. Coming

Carolyn Cochrane 1:06:21

in at number two is Red Rover. Red Rover. Send Kristen over, and we're all holding your nose.

Michelle Newman 1:06:31

Do you remember when it would be like, send, you know, yeah, send Jason right over. And Jason would make a beeline, like, for mine and Kristen's arms, right, yes, link, and it would hurt, like a lot of times you

Kristin Nilsen 1:06:45

would do, it would hurt. And I remember pairing up with Maura Jones, and she would hold my hand so tightly, and she would rub my knuckles together, and it was like, oh, that's wrinkle. It is. The better we were at the games, right? The tighter. Well, that

Carolyn Cochrane 1:07:00

really tight. Yes, I

Michelle Newman 1:07:02

never got through like they knew the other team was like, Yeah, we're asking for Michelle to run over first, because I would like basically be skipping over. Did twirl my baton? A couple

Carolyn Cochrane 1:07:13

of people mentioned, like, raising their hand, their arms right as the person got closer. So you would like you could clothesline them

Kristin Nilsen 1:07:23

in the Ness, oh, my god, Adam's apple.

Michelle Newman 1:07:30

End up like Darren Hayes Diego God's playing a neighborhood game,

Kristin Nilsen 1:07:33

death by Red Rover.

Michelle Newman 1:07:36

I can honestly say that I don't have one memory of us playing that in the neighborhood, for me, it's always in like Reese at recess, recess, yeah, agree, because you needed a lot of people. Yeah. You needed a string of like 12 on each side, at least. Yeah, that's true. That was a classroom game. Are you all ready for the number one neighborhood game as voted on, as determined by the followers of the pop culture Preservation Society? Drum roll, please. And that is freeze tag. Now we've already mentioned several variations of tag. I loved all the variations of tag, even though I was always one of the it's right, I could never keep it up with all the freezing like, if I'm trying to unfreeze people, you know. And usually I read a little bit about it. It said, usually there was two, two people. I remember only having to play with one. And it's like shoveling your sidewalk while it's snowing. You know, I could never keep up. I'm freezing, freezing, and then everybody else is running around unfreezing. But that is the number one of all the variations of tag we've talked about, one that didn't get mentioned. I loved, obviously, because now I love doing this, what I do is TV tag. Did you guys ever

Kristin Nilsen 1:08:44

play TV that was actually my friend Kristen. It was her number one game. Was TV tag? Yeah, I was

Michelle Newman 1:08:49

my number one type of tag, for sure. But it didn't make our list, but freeze tag did. So yeah, freeze tag was the

Kristin Nilsen 1:08:56

and TV tag, if you, if I recall correctly, if you called out the name of a TV show, then the tag, then it couldn't tag you, nope. Like you're getting double so you go Happy Days, yes, yeah, exactly. Then the next person can't say Happy days. You have to go Three's Company, no. So by the end, you're like, really reaching for shows, because you're like, those have been said people. Me.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:09:25

Okay, so here's some that didn't make our countdown, and a few that who screwed dude me. One that was so fun was Simon Says I loved Simon Says I did

Kristin Nilsen 1:09:34

like, I loved Simon says, Yeah. And I really wanted to know who was Simon. Oh, like, I was so literal. I'm like, Well, who is he? And I had an image in my head and everything. Of who he was. That's a

Carolyn Cochrane 1:09:44

really good question, question. Then people talked about a game that I played in a classroom. Was seven up. Did you guys play a neighborhood? Yes. Was there something with your thumb? That's the classroom, okay. But this one had to do with a ball and, like, a or something. Thing. Oh, you throw it up in the air, it. People just talked about the ball.

Michelle Newman 1:10:05

You throw it, it's a good chance. Yes, it's like, you

Kristin Nilsen 1:10:08

throw it up in the air, and then everybody scatters, but then somebody has to catch it. Oh, or is that Spud? Oh, that's my next one on here is Spud. Oh, no. Spud Tony also mentioned spud Tony, who said ghoul. He also he had a whole list of them, and spud was one of them. And I feel like maybe that was Spud, where you throw it up in the air and everybody scatters, but then the person who throws it maybe says a name, and then you have to run back and catch it. There's

Michelle Newman 1:10:32

actually Wikipedia entry for this. Basically the leader gives everyone a number, yeah, the leader throws the ball in the air and shouts one of the numbers, everyone whose number was not called starts to run. The player with the assigned number catches the ball and yells, Spud, yes, everyone in place when they hear this. The player then takes three large steps, oh my god, toward any of the players that oh my god, we played this all the time. Yes, the other player can move any part of their body except their feet, so they catch it. They can dodge it. The thrower gets the letter S. If the thrower hits the player, the player gets the letter who skirt?

Kristin Nilsen 1:11:11

And then that the other one that Tony mentioned. And this was a, this was a hoosker do moment for me too. Annie Annie over doesn't sound familiar. No. Annie Annie over is when you have two teams on either side of a usually it's like a garage, or it can be a fence, or it can be a hedge. Before you throw the ball, you yell, Annie Annie over, and then they have to catch the ball. And if they catch the ball, then they can run around the garage and throw the ball at other people on the team to get them out. Annie Annie over, I love that

Carolyn Cochrane 1:11:43

we are probably who screw doing the wazoo out of so many of our listeners right

Kristin Nilsen 1:11:46

now, somebody's going, Oh my god. Annie Annie over,

so many of the things that we talk about on this podcast are now gone. There are things of the past and and we miss them, but maybe the kids of today are like, No way, man, our way is better, and so, you know, to each his own. And sometimes they're right, but this one might be different. This is absolutely not how childhood goes today, as we've discussed, I'm sure there are exceptions out there, and thank God for that, but for the most part, childhood does not look like this anymore. Evenings are full of sports practices and away games. Things are scheduled, and you're chauffeured there by your parents, and they pick you up, and they take you home when you're done, and then you play video games and watch YouTube shorts until bedtime because you're so worn out from practice. And some people would say that we, the neglected generation, missed out on important opportunities. But if I had to choose a million times over, I'm choosing NIMBY and statue makers and TV tag and Charlie's Angels and hopscotch and kick the can a million times over. I'm picking that instead of away games, we had freedom, we had so much creativity, we had spontaneous collaboration, and we were happy. Thank you so much, and we will see you next time

Michelle Newman 1:13:18

I feel like going out and rounding up some neighbors going and buying a ball, yes, or just maybe I'll just go buy a ball, yes. And we'd like to give a special thank you to our supporters on Patreon. Honestly, we could not do any of this, any of it, the podcast, the social media, without you. And today, we are thanking these patrons. Nina Lynn, Patty, Valerie, Rachelle, Mindy, Susan Joanna, Carolyn. Carolyn, yeah, not that. Carolyn, thanks for supporting us. Carolyn, Jen, Cindy and Diane, thanks so so much to you and to all of our patrons. Yes, we

Carolyn Cochrane 1:13:59

so appreciate your support, and we appreciate when you share your love of the podcast with others. Share it with your friends, share it at work, share it with your family, share it on social media, share, share, share. Also, if you haven't yet, we would be so grateful if you would leave a review on whatever podcast platform you listen. That really helps us with that whole algorithm thing, and more people seeing us, and then, of course, the more people that see us, the bigger our society gets, and the more friends we have. And it's it's all good, joy, joy, joy. So please do that right now.

Kristin Nilsen 1:14:33

In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast courtesy of the cast of three, two good times,

Michelle Newman 1:14:39

two Happy Days to

Carolyn Cochrane 1:14:42

Little House on the Prairie shares the information, opinions and

Kristin Nilsen 1:14:47

comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belong solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates. And though we truly believe we are always right, there's always a first. Time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards Nanu. Nanu, keep on trucking and May the Force Be With You. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai