This is the Friday Late Night Edition of Flashback Friday
brought to you by Quilldancer.

Flashback Friday is the brain child of Linda from Mocha With Linda. This is the meme that takes us back in time to the days of our youth. Linda says, This meme’s purpose is to have us take a look back and share about a specific time or event in our lives. It will be fun to see how similar – or different – our experiences have been! This week Linda wants us to share our memories of our favorite puzzles and games.

My cousin Patty had every board game under the sun. This was our favorite at her house. We played it two or three times per day, but only during bad weather. If the weather was at all tolerable, we weren’t allowed in the house. Patty and I also enjoyed playing Trouble and Parcheesi.

With my Weniger cousins the games usually involved more thinking or Math.  They were all super-fast at putting puzzles together and doing math in their heads.  I hated putting puzzles together with them. They’d place 8-9 pieces to my one — and despite the fact that we were all kids, the puzzles were generally no smaller than 250 pieces.  However, of all the the entertainment choices we had, we almost always played Kismet — Kismet was like Yahtzee, but the dice were colored and one had to get color and number combinations in order to meet one’s quotas.

At my house we had two favorite games.  One –BINGO! — took hours to play because we’d each have 6 cards and we always played to blackout.  The other game, however, was really our favorite — Cooties! This photo (found on the internet) could actually be my game.  This is the original 1949 edition my family and friends were still playing in 1969 and for all I know is still in a cupboard in Grandma’s house (my cousin lives there now).

However, my favorite games of all were the outdoor games.  Of course we played tag of various different kinds and incarnations.  We even played bicycle tag that was a lot like flag football.  We’d clothespin bandannas to our shirt sleeves.  If the person who was “It” snatched your bandanna away, then you became, “It.”  The game often involved bike crashes, but I don’t remember anybody ever getting hurt.

Another outside favorite was baseball.  There was a huge field about 3 blocks from our house.  We were allowed to play baseball there because none of us could possibly hit a window.  Previous to playing in that field, we played on the school grounds, but I somehow managed (at 10 years old) to hit the baseball with enough force to drive it 100 yards to the fence, over the fence, across the street, and through the window on Tapley’s Cabinet Shop.  It was a pure fluke, but even so it got us banned from the immediate neighborhood.

A couple of my girlfriends and I liked to play hopscotch, jump rope, and Chinese jump rope, but the boys didn’t care for them and since there was about an even mix of boys and girls that played together, we didn’t frequently indulge in those “girly” games.

In my teen years when I lived with my father and step-mother, we almost always played a game or two of cards after dinner.  We played Acey-Duecy, Canasta, and Michigan Rummy.  Sometimes we’d play Cribbage, too.  On Friday nights my dad, step-mom and I always went to the Baker’s house and played a progressive rummy game that my sister now calls 3-13.  I can’t recall what name we gave it then, but I do know it was different.

My very most cherished game playing memories of all come from the hours I spent playing Rummy with my friend, Mary.  I rarely ever beat her.  I’m lucky if I can remember a card 20 seconds after I play it.  She knew where every card in the deck was at all times.  It wasn’t so much the card playing that made my time with Mary special.  It was the friendship and the laughter.