Remember?

Ball and jacks (Click picture for larger view)

Remember?

Remember when you played "Jacks"
You picked one up before the ball came back?
Remember playing "Hide and Seek"
You closed your eyes and sneaked a peek?
Remember when you flew a kite,
To get it up took all your might?
Remember when a piece of chalk
Wrote game boundaries on the walk?
Remember when with your hands
You made a ball from rubber bands?
Remember how you bounced a ball
For no rhyme or reason at all?
Remember how you had a fit
When you heard "Tag, you're it?"
Remember how skates and a wooden box
Made a racer that was tops?
Remember when you spun a top
And wished it would never stop?
Remember kicking an empty can
Along the curb as you ran?
Remember who got blamed
When everyday the rules were changed?
Do kids today have more fun
Sitting and watching their Nintendos run?

~ Sue Chuzi

Do you remember playing jacks or hide and seek or flying down the hill on your bicycle, handlebar streamers flowing in the wind? I do. I remember catching fireflies in glass jars on warm summer evenings, jumping out of apple trees and rolling down the hill, splashing in a rickety round kiddy swimming pool 12 inches deep, swinging on a little metal swingset as high as I could go without tilting it over and making mudpies in little toy cake pans. I remember candy necklaces made with edible rings that tasted like banana, the hot night air in Roanoke,Virginia with no air conditioning and all the cricket sounds and birds chirping in the bushes. I remember black and white TV with only three stations. There was no SONY corporation or Nintendo or home computers. No cell phones, blackberries or e-mail. These modern times are better? Sometimes I wonder.

Submission for PXITE topic "ball". (end of post)