I remember the game, “Mother, May I?”, except I think we called it something else..hmmm..maybe “take a giant step” or something. I grew to hate that game eventually — the person who played “Mother” invariably let all her friends take GIANT steps while the rest of us had to take baby steps. I was NOT part of that “in crowd” at that time. 🙂
For little girls, I remember a game called something like, “Mother, May I?”. Someone would be Mother and the player would say, “Mother, may I take a giant step?” and Mother had the option of saying, “Yes, you may” or, “No, you may not”. If she said, “No!”, the player would have to beg and demean herself in front of Mother, eg. “Mother, may I take an eensy weensy step?” or “Mother, please, may I take an itty bitty step?” I can’t remember how the game ended; it may not have. It definitely involved a lot of begging and laughing.
Girl games… we used to sit in the vestibule of someone’s house and play “jacks” for hours and hours. Growing up in Pittsburgh, right in the city, not in one of the cleaner suburbs, we played in the streets everynight. Red Rover, Cigarette Tag, Freeze Tag, Can’t cross the Mississippi unless you have(a shouted color) on, then everyone would run across the street if you had that color on. Anyone remember that one?
I was surprised that in the discussion of “balls” no mention was made of the fact that that wonderful pink ball with the nice script “Spalding” on it, was pronounced, at least where I grew up, as a “Spaldeen.” I also wish that someone would post some of the “girl” games: jump rope along with the chants/songs; hopscotch (lots of different rules), etc.
I loved sitting on the stoop. It was the perfect bench – placing you close to but above the “field” so you could see all the action on the block. When we moved into the big apartment buildings, stoop sitting got more difficult, but even then, we’d usually congregate around some side entrance that had one.