When I was little, I was told to go and play outside till dinnertime. By my parents, that is. This confession itself should be enough to give away my age. Which is what it is, and clearly marks me from a generation that not only obeyed their parents, but also considered playing outside as a safe and healthy activity.
My siblings and I ran around with other children in our neighbourhood, and sometimes that is all we did. We ran in circles singing ‘ring-a-ring-a-roses’, we ran from one side of the yard to the other shouting ‘corner, corner, which corner do you want’, we ran in triangles chanting ‘I’m a little triangle, I have three sides’ and we also made a sort of human train and ran in a straight file, singing ‘oranges and lemons sold for a penny’.
We flopped giggling and panting on the green lawn and got bits of grass stuck in our hair. And every other day, we invented new games from parts of discarded boxes, strings, marbles, seashells or rounded stones. There was no end to our creativity or our collective imagination.
Pieces of newspaper would be used in hundreds of different ways – to design paper boats, airplanes, kites, caps, arrows or even slingshots.
One innovative game we played was called Paper Fortune Activity. It is a long-forgotten invention now, so I have to rack my brains in order to remember how it was devised. First, a blank piece of paper was folded into box-like squares to form four petal-shaped flaps.
On each of the outer folds, a colour was marked, in words. Inside those flaps there were four more flaps, all split down the middle for a total of eight. On every flap, a number was pencilled, and under those numbers, a daring activity was inscribed. These strange dares were left to the creativity of the inventor, entirely.
It seemed like a complicated game but, after one got the hang of it, it was quite simple, really.
To begin with, the outer flaps of the Paper Fortune Activity creation had to be flipped between the index finger and thumb of both hands, and the other team was asked to pick one colour.
If the colour was Blue, for instance, further pinching and pulling of the flaps was used to spell it out. One had to be good with spelling or else one was instantly dropped from the game. Then a number had to be selected that was again spelled out in words. Finally, the much-dreaded Paper Fortune Activity was revealed to the unsuspecting party who had to perform the ludicrous act amidst much clapping and laughter.
As children, most of our time was spent outdoors in childish games anyway, however, whenever my parents did not want us to eavesdrop on any of the grown-up gossip, they told us to go outside and play as well. This resulted in me being completely clueless about some of the juiciest scandals that occurred right under my nose, so to speak.
‘Where were you when your Aunt eloped?’ my husband asked the other day.
‘I was playing outside’, I replied.
‘And when your neighbour was arrested?’ he queried.
‘Playing outside’, I repeated.
‘Were you ever indoors?’ he wanted to know.
‘Yes, of course! At dinnertime’, I said.
‘And before that?’ he asked.
I opened my mouth to answer.
‘Don’t say!’ he twinkled.
I turned around to hide my smile.
‘Playing outside’, he answered for me.
By Nickunj Malik
|| features@portugalresident.com
Nickunj Malik’s journalistic career began when she walked into the office of Khaleej Times newspaper in Dubai thirty-one years ago and got the job. Since then, her articles have appeared in various newspapers all over the world. She now resides in Portugal and is married to a banker who loves numbers more than words.
