From preschool through seventh-grade, I was home-schooled. I have eight siblings. Put those two things together, and you have a group of overly energized children coming up with the most ridiculous ways to entertain themselves. As the oldest of the Hosticka clan, I often took charge of my siblings and decided how we would spend our afternoons.
And let me tell you — my idea of playing games was a little, well, different. Rather than normal activities such as “Hide and Seek” and “Duck, Duck, Goose,” I came up with much less typical entertainment.
The first of these many creations was called “Playing Sharley, Garley and Pip.” It consisted mainly of my siblings crawling around and following me. In other words, they were all dogs, and I was the dog owner. In our one-acre backyard (pretty big for the Chicago suburbs) I would feed them, tell them what to do and be proud of myself for being in charge. The funny thing was that they enjoyed being dogs as much as I did being their owner.
Another one of our inventions was called “Oregon Trail.” Although it may sound like a familiar computer game, this was a much more authentic version of the historical event. Beginning at the shed on one side of the yard, we would take out a little red wagon and long purple sled (these were our covered wagons). Loaded on these wagons would be the smallest children, buckets of leaves (our food), jump ropes (lassos), Frisbees (plates), and a baseball bat or two (to kill animals for food).
Then the adventure would begin. From the shed we would walk slowly with the older kids pulling the covered wagons. After 10 minutes, we traveled about 30 feet and ended up at the hose. This was the only “lake” along the entire trip, so we would all soak ourselves with water, attempt to drink from the hose and then continue.
Oftentimes, someone would fall ill along the way, fall off the wagon, or anything else to create drama in our little wagon train. Nonetheless, we were thoroughly entertained and Mom was happy to have an hour or so of peace and quiet in the house.
I could go on for pages about the games that we came up with — “Boot Camp,” “How to Live in a Tornado” and “Day Care” to name a few. However ridiculous we may have looked, it was some of the most technology-free fun I’ve had.
Which brings me to my point here: Kids these days don’t do anything but play on their computers and video games and all that. Now, you may say, “What do you know about kids these days? You’re only 17. You’re still a kid!” Which I guess is a valid point.
But you get what I’m saying.
Creative little minds would have so much more fun if they just left the couch for a few hours … and maybe if they pretended to be dogs on the Oregon Trail, that would help too.