schoolyard stories

[b i o n i c]

when i was a kid, i was the first one at school to have karate classes. this was first or second grade. my dad brought me home this strip roll of black elastic, which i brought to school with the nunchucks he made me out of broomsticks. when i flashed those babies, i was a god.

we took the roll and cut everyone a black belt. we wore white button downs, so after lunch everyone would untuck and engage the black belts. if my memory serves me right, some of my friends could actually run up walls and fly. i had skinned elbows.

after a while we started actually doing 7 year old karate classes where i would do what i learned the night before and my friends would line up in front of me like they did at the kobra khan dojo and repeat. i think some of them were able to beg their parents into getting them into karate from there. everyone saw karate kid and thought they were a ninja

one day, one of the quiet kids moms was on lunch yard duty, she was the first adult to ever come over and try to find out exactly what was going on. i remember sitting in the principals office, the sun at her back made the white hairs on her face light up like glass noodles. i dont recall anything but being scared shitless that she was gonna take my nunchucks. she took our black belts

SHE LET ME GO HOME WITH MY NUNCHUCKS!

[Nuzzolese]

That's beautiful, especially the part about the untucked shirts and the glass noodles.

[b i o n i c]

i know at least one of you made it to the third grade...

[b i o n i c]

someone kicked the ball over the fucking school during kickball. the kid was a beast. true story.. (he's a cop now)

did anyone here play "butts up"? whoever caught the ball had to throw it against the wall form where they stood and if they missed, that person had to get up against the wall, ass out and everyone else would line up and get a shot with a tennis ball.

someone mentioned "manhunt" the other day and i nearly started having an acid flashback

[adam_f]

I got suspended in sixth grade because I accidentally kicked the kickball into my teachers face. The thing is, it was a windy day, and I'm not Mark Wahlberg in Shooter so I can't take wind velocity and triangulation and shit into my craft, and it just so happened her face got in the way of my triple and she said it was deliberate.

Bitch.

[RobMoney$]

did anyone here play "butts up"? whoever caught the ball had to throw it against the wall form where they stood and if they missed, that person had to get up against the wall, ass out and everyone else would line up and get a shot with a tennis ball.

someone mentioned "manhunt" the other day and i nearly started having an acid flashback


We called it "Sui", it was short for "Suicide".
The way we played, someone threw the ball against the wall and everyone else had to try to catch it.
If you dropped the catch, you'd have to run and touch the wall and call "Sui" before someone else picked up the ball and hit you with it.
If someone hit you, you'd have to line up ass-out at the wall and everyone got to throw a fastball at your ass.

Growing up I played a ton of these kinds of games.
Sui, Capsies, Stepball, Stickball, Halfsies, Buck-Buck, Pom-Pom Poolaway...

and fucking manhunt. Shit, we used to cut school and go to Pennypack Park and play that all day. If you got caught we used to throw each other in the creek and everything. Totally ruin our school clothes.

[Bob]

did anyone here play "butts up"? whoever caught the ball had to throw it against the wall form where they stood and if they missed, that person had to get up against the wall, ass out and everyone else would line up and get a shot with a tennis ball.

yeah but we called it "buttball." i nearly got into my first (and only, i think) fight over a game of buttball. i was running towards the wall, and this kid who i (and everyone) hated hit me in the butt and he started laughing like a jackass, so i got pissed off and whipped the ball back at his face and it smacked him right in the cheek. he got pissed off and rushed at me and started kicking and punching me. i didn't really know what to do so i just kind of stood there taking it until one of the counselors broke it up

didn't even hurt

[Dorothy Wood]

this is the first time I've heard of these butt games. they sound terrible!

the closest thing I have is the game we played in 4th grade, where the boys chased the girls around and punched them until they cried. sounds worse than it was, mostly they'd throw a soft punch to the arm or the back and the girl would quit or start crying or whining and lose. I did well because I really liked boys and wanted them to think I was cool and tough; and they weren't even hitting hard. I think the whole thing was more about flirting than hurting anyone.

When I won, the boys would parade me around the playground proclaiming me the "coolest girl in 4th grade". but then it stopped being fun when I was the only girl who'd still play.

oh man, we had so much fun back then. we were always building forts and playing soccer or basketball, sometimes red rover (which was banned, but we'd sneak sometimes)...we had some huge kick ass teeter totters that we would "surf" and then do this thing where you lay down on one end with your head toward the middle with your feet hooked under the handle, while another person or a couple of people would move the teeter totter up and down and push you all the way up in the air so you were half way upside down, then just drop you, BAM!

I feel like we had little to no supervision out there most of the time. it was awesome. and completely dangerous.

[RobMoney$]

I feel like we had little to no supervision out there most of the time. it was awesome. and completely dangerous.


Yeah, my kids went to the same elementary school as I did.
We were free to go anywhere in the schoolyard and do anything we wanted (including climbing trees).
We invented our own games half the time.
When my kids went there, they had to sign up for 1 of 4 different supervised activities, and if the one activity was filled up, they'd have to take whatever was left. Like if kickball was filled up, you'd have to take jumprope. It was total bullshit. Their friends would all often be seperated because of this.

Little to no supervision ruled.

[b i o n i c]

im so glad i got to be a child in the 80's

whats all this "playdate" shit? helmets, knee pads and seatbelts?! pffft...

my knees were one giant constant scab when i was a kid.

.

50 points to whoever knows what car hopping is

when we played manhunt, it was throught a 5 block radius of the neighborhood, backyards and under cars included. i remember running from someone, jumping over a fence and turning to see a whole family having a barbeque. i just smiled and jumped out over the back fence and kept going. that kind of thing actually happened often.

[hardnox71]

did anyone here play "butts up"? whoever caught the ball had to throw it against the wall form where they stood and if they missed, that person had to get up against the wall, ass out and everyone else would line up and get a shot with a tennis ball.

OMG!!! I learned this game ^ in 1980 when I was eight/nine years old living in El Cajon, Ca.

Sometimes we would use a tennis ball but most of the time we would use one of those white sponge rubber balls that looked almost like a baseball but not quite as heavy. That plus the fact that almost all of us played Little League made for very painful games. Man, when the street lights came on we would all be rubbing our welts and limping home and looking forward to 3pm the next day when we would run out of school and do it all over again. We were stupid but, God, we had fun.

Ahh, the memories.(y)

[jabumbo]

yeah, we called ours buttball as well.

if you dropped it, you had to run and tough the wall and if you got hit form someone else picking up the ball you got an out. when you got 3 outs you had to line up to get pegged in the ass.


the best part about it was after you got through the line up, you could come back into the game fresh with no outs. so you could come back and unleash your fury on the other people who had a couple outs before. so usually nobody managed through a game without getting hit at least once

[rirv]

I got suspended in sixth grade because I accidentally kicked the kickball into my teachers face. The thing is, it was a windy day, and I'm not Mark Wahlberg in Shooter so I can't take wind velocity and triangulation and shit into my craft, and it just so happened her face got in the way of my triple and she said it was deliberate.

Bitch.

When I was nine or ten we'd been to the museum as a class and I had bought a little slot together glider in the shop (like this (http://www.partyark.co.uk/pictures/large2/119.jpg)). Waiting to get picked up after school I slotted it together and gave it a hurl into the air and the wind caught it and curved it straight into the back of my teacher's head about 20 yards away. He grabbed the glider and crushed it in his hands and shouted at me to never pull a stunt like that again. As if I could have hit him again if I'd tried.

[RobMoney$]

yeah, we called ours buttball as well.

if you dropped it, you had to run and tough the wall and if you got hit form someone else picking up the ball you got an out. when you got 3 outs you had to line up to get pegged in the ass.


Wasn't it great when you got 3 outs and everyone missed their butt shot at you!

[Freebasser]

SHIT RAG!

Based on the age-old game of headers and volleys but with a twist.

People take turns to cross a SOCCER ball into the goalmouth and others have to score by either heading or volleying (kicking the the ball before it hits the floor) into the back of the net.

One person goes in goal and has to prevent everyone scoring. If the goalkeeper catches a cross, header or volley, whoever touches the ball last has to replace him in goal. If someone hits the post or misses the goal with a header or a volley then they have to replace the goalkeeper.

The first person to concede ten goals wins, and by wins I mean they have to get down on all fours with their arse in the air, facing the goal, while all the other people take turns shooting the ball at their arse at 70mph. Fun for all involved, except the poor fucker who got arsesmacked.

No idea why it was called 'Shit Rag' though.

[paul jones]

A lot of time on school breaks between age 7-12 were spent swapping Panini football stickers.

got got got need need got got need got need got got got got got got need need need got got need .....

I once chipped my front teef by running into a brick wall chasing a girl playing kiss-chase(y)

[rirv]

I once chipped my front teef by running into a brick wall chasing a girl playing kiss-chase(y)

Story of your life.

[Nuzzolese]

Once in grade school we took a field trip to Red Lobster where we toured the kitchen. A woman with a tray of french fries offered us each one. Mine was hot so I held it gingerly between my fingers until someone bumped into me, I dropped it, and it was immediately stepped on.

[b i o n i c]

field trip to red lobster, lol(y)

ok not schoolyard either, but we did a trip to the statue of liberty and walked up to the crown. its actually the size of a small approx 12 x 12 room up there. the stairs go up in a spiral. the irish girl couldnt take the round round and ended up puking right down the middle.

she sort of puked down the throat of the the statue of liberty.

.

we did the beat up the girls game too, cept the boys were the ungabungas and the girls were ooochie-gotchies. we caught the girls by punching them in the arm and they had to stay under the tree till one of their friends tagged them out. one of the boys would stand guard and bounce around like a gorilla scaring the girls under the tree (ungabunga!) while they waited to be rescued. the girls would all act like they hated it but actually loved it, fact.

i think this is how i first touched a boob

[camo]

We used to play Kingy (like tig but instead of tapping someone as 'it' you'd throw a tennis ball at them). That got banned when my little bro broke some kids finger with a nicely placed shot.

Bazzing. Two teams stand at each end of the playing ground (on the grass) and throw a tennis ball across the length of the tarmac and try to get it to land on the grass without someone catching it. My arms burnt with lactic acid every class after a lunchtime 'Bazzing'. That got banned when someone (eyes in the air) ran into and floored the head dinner lady.

British Bulldog. Two teams either side of the playground. One tries to make it across to the other side whilst the other team try to stop you by any means possible. That got banned when some kid broke his collar bone and
slipped a disc.

One memory that sticks in my mind is when I etched a cock and balls into the back of Andrew Bier's wax jacket whilst I sat behind him in the dinner queue and Mrs Culley had the entire class stay behind until someone admitted to it. In the end a kid named Wayne grassed me up so I stole his bike from his front garden and filled the frame up with Horse shit and claimed that I 'found it on the park'.

[b i o n i c]

cockandbawls, heh. i like that british soccer game, but im sure you made it up. that british bulldog sounds familiar.. i dont know what we called it here

there was a time someone found a used condom in the parking lot and one of the kids picked it up and threw it at a group of girls who let out the most earpiercing shrieks that still haunts my mind. afterwards, a crowd of about 30 kids surrounded the thing on the ground, everyone giving a different explanation for what it was and why it was there

[Freebasser]

^ We did that with a huge slug once. The annoying kid stamped on it when we were all huddled in for a closer look and I got slug parts in my mouth.

[b i o n i c]

there was a time when we used to all play truth or dare in the school yard, but sometimes we would have to actually hide in the graveyard to do it. romantic, yes. its kind of weird, the things we did. i feel like if this sort of thing happened now it would be news and there would be heads rolling, but back then no one seemed to care.

[Nuzzolese]

Foursquare, with its hierarchy, loyalties, intricate and ever-changing rules, and its fickle shift of power, was like a little dictatorship with constant coups and civil wars. Did anyone play foursquare? I used to but eventually I quit when the competition got to be too much for me; and who could keep up with all those rules? I had to escape to the swings, and on days when I wasn't fast enough to nab one, (and I had too much self respect to stand there counting as the teacher decreed, as if I could do anything to make the other person get off the swing once I got to 30, puh-lease!) I started just walking around with my bff or jumping rope (I got pretty good at double dutch, I could jump in and out and everything) or playing such classic hand-clapping games as: Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack; Miss Suzy Had a Steamboat; and Shame, Shame I don't wanna go to Mexico no more, more, more...

[hpdrifter]

The Bars

The clock ticks, 30 seconds til recess. I am on my mark, ready to sprint out the door the instant the bell rings and be the first to the bars. If I don't get a head start the freakishly small, inexplicably popular gymnastics girls will dominate. Their pale eyes squinting out from behind nonexistent red eyelashes saying you don't belong here, you're too tall and poor. Their ridiculously short and skinny arms and legs, swimming in oversized International News sweatshirts and brightly colored knit sweaters, able to do tricks I have not yet mastered.

I made it! Oh, why did I wear jeans today? The front button cuts into my stomach as I swing up onto the mid-level bar. Not the highest (which I can barely reach) or the lowest. Its the best one, the one everyone goes for first, and definitely my favorite. I decide I'll focus on cherry drops and knee spins (one or both knees and with arms on top of or linked below the bars). Tomorrow I will remember to wear my stirrup pants and can work on the elusive front full body spin.

They're two steps behind me. Too late, I'm here to stay bitches.