When we played Bombardment, we had a pin on either side of the line, and we had to protect the pin. If your pin fell over, you automatically lost.
That was my favorite game as a child. I was the only girl who actually catch the balls and make red marks on the skin of the boys on the other team as I got them out. When we chose teams, I was always chosen third, after Marty and Joey, the only two people who were better than me. I don't think at that age the boys cared that I got picked before most of them, they knew I was good, so they wanted me on their teams.
That was great!
I used to climb trees waaaaaaay high up, and then dangle upside down from the branch, I knew, KNEW, I would never fall, I just had too much coordination. And I never did fall.
As I was older, I watched my nephew climb a tree, and it took everything I had not to call him down, I tried to remember what a monkey I was as a child. Of course, he climbed as high as he wanted to go, and never got hurt.
Funny, though, when I was little, I lived in the middle of an apple orchard, and this was in the mid seventies, a plane would come and crop dust the Alar and other fertilizers and pesticides over the trees, and my mother would call us all in PRONTO, shut all the windows and make us breathe through handkerchiefs for about two hours. No playing in the orchard until the next rain. We all thought she was ridiculous, but it turns out she was right.
Way ahead of her time, my mother was.
The other thing my brothers and I used to do (this is going to show you how dumb I was as a child) was what we called free play. My eldest brother would hide in a closet, and my other brother on the lower bunk, and myself in the top bunk. Then we threw things at each other. Wooden blocks, metal toys, it was GREAT fun! I threw a wooden train and connected and gave my eldest brother 13 stitches in his head (considering he was 12 and I was 4, this was an incredible feat of skill on my part).
My brother would also take a belt, and wrap three pillows around me, two in the front, and one in the back, cinch the belt, and then he had a built in boxing bag. I was proud to be a part of this, anything my brothers let me do with them made me very happy, truly I don't think I grew any brains until I was 18, really.
It wasn't until my brothers hung me over the side of a third floor balcony and threatened to drop me, and then did, by accident, that my parents thought it would be a good idea to take a greater role in our activities. And move to a one story home. I did manage to escape injury in that fall.
