on being a kid

Today, one of my childhood friends tagged a photo of me. For a moment I thought I would see my face, beaming (and showing a victory sign), but heck, I saw pictures of round colorful objects with different characters on them. Then I realized why this friend of mine tagged me in this photo -- the round colorful objects, which were called POGS, were one of the things we used to play with when we were young.

It brought back memories. Lots of memories.

Like what I've said in my previous post, my memory got poorer but I think the things that were erased from my mind were the most recent ones. Yes, I have forgotten tons of good/bad things which happened in the past but seeing the tagged photo made me want to recall them, some, at least.

When I was young, I had a group of friends in our neighborhood. We were eight in the group. Most of us were same age, so we shared the same interest. The younger and the older ones were forced to share the same interest with us, though. :P

Summer vacation and Christmas vacation were the most fun seasons for us. Everyday, we met, played, fought (over the shallowest of things), laughed (at the shallowest of things too), sang, danced, played again, fought again... we'd only return home when we were being called to have lunch or dinner.

Aha! I have an idea. Why don't I list down the things we used to do and used to play with? Good?! That's so clever of me, huh? :P

Well, here they are:

1. POGS - If there was one reason why I was a plump kid back then was this. POGS could be collected from the nearest 'sari-sari' store (in our case, it was Aling Libay's), if and only if, you'd buy a bottle of COKE. The more bottles of coke, the more the more chances of winning (more pogs, that is). 

2. ROLLER BLADES - Chasing barefooted children is difficult, never mind chasing children with wheels. All of us, but one, had a pair of these. All but one. This friend of mine never learned how to use this pair of wheeled footwear, or any other thing which has ONLY TWO WHEELS for that matter. So what did she do while we rolled down the streets? She rode a bike with a 'side-car'. She trailed us while we happily and excitingly glided swiftly with our roller blades on. But she never minded. We were inspired by (not the Roller boys which starred by Patrick Garcia), MIGHTY DUCKS. For some time, we believed that we were them. We played socks hockey (more explanation after this item), and also had our 'roller blades lesson' which was led by the eldest in our group.

3. SOCKS HOCKEY - Since it never snowed in my country and since we were so eager to play the sport which our 'idols' played, we improvised a game of our own. One of our neighbor's houses had a big polished garage. Now you could imagine how we played hockey back then. We used a coconut shell as our puck and our very own feet as hockey sticks. More like soccer, huh? We didn't care, we still called it hockey. After the game, what we worried most about were our once-white socks which were soiled with red floor polish and the faces of our fumed moms.

4. Street games - Afternoons were never complete without us playing 'bulok', 'patintero', 'agawan-base' and 'langit-lupa'. Afternoons were never complete without one of us got pissed off and went home crying because of the game.

5. UNO STACK-O - When we're tired of roller-blading or playing in the street, we spent our 'relaxation time' with UNO-STACK-O. Well I didn't feel relaxed at that time, I was more of 'tensed' because whoever made the blocks tumble down, would get a punishment. Whatever the punishment was, I couldn't remember anymore.

6. CARD GAMES - I love gambling. not. Haha. At that time, we just played Lucky 9 or Pares-pares, One-two-three-pass, and tong-its. No money inloved. just pure fun and gags.

7. Ten-twenty. Chinese garter. And even limbo-rock. We played these with this thin, stretchable material which I believe people my age played too when they were young. These games required too much jumping. and too much calorie-burning. :P

8. SPORTS - Who would've thought I enjoyed sports when I was young. Well, yeah, I did. Every summer break, we woke up as early as 5 or 6 in the morning to jog and to play basketball. Compared to my immobility right now, I was really an active and athletic kid back then.

I experienced all the normal activities every child had to do. I must say, I enjoyed my childhood very much. I was an only child but that did not hinder me from being a happy kid. I was surrounded with happy-go-lucky friends who turned out to be responsible adults now. and of course, thanks to our cool parents  who let us do our thing with their guidance.
When I thought about yesteryears, I knew deep in my heart that I did not regret anything. I knew that I had that time of my life when I got to know myself and my friends and realized that we savored making memories together. Though some went and some stayed, I definitely believed that when you got to sit with any of them, they would tell you the same stories just like I did in here.

Us, dancing "Oh, Carol!" Oops, I was not in the picture. Maybe It was me who took the shot? Lols!