Five on Friday: Games Young People Play (A Double Feature!)

You know kids, they only think they want toys. The novelty of a new Lego set or racetrack wears off in about five minutes--but games they create with their siblings last and last. In between the ever-present bickering lately (I'm hearing a lot about Mercury being in retrograde, can that stop now? Please?) are bouts of all five kids playing these awesome games they've made up together. It's been making me reminisce about the games I used to play with my sisters when we were growing up.  So for today's Five on Friday list, a double feature!

Games we played:

1. CAVEY: Played in the play yard where the swing set and play house were. My sister J and neighbor H lived in the little house and I was a caveman named (you guessed it) Cavey who constantly messed things up and wasn't allowed in the house. Hey, wait a minute . . . 

2. DOCTOR, DOCTOR: One sister would leave the room while the other three tangled up with each other in a human knot on the floor and then shouted, "Doctor! Doctor!" Other sister came back and had to detangle the knot.

3.  ORPHANS: So many games revolved around being shipwrecked, lost in the woods or somehow otherwise becoming oprhaned and having to live on our own. I blame Disney.

4.  NURSE GOODLADY:  Once when my younger sister got sick at the end of the summer I thought it would be fun to help take care of her and so I became Nurse Goodlady (we were very creative with the names, as you can tell). She got better. I got Scarlet Fever. Not even joking.

5. YOU CAN'T COME IN HERE:  I'll admit, I was trying to freak my sister out with this but then it turned into a game. We'd sit at the kitchen table doing nothing and then I'd look up at the door and say in a spooky voice, "You . . . can't . . . come . . . in . . . here!" Then we'd run and scream and jump on my parents' bed and kick each other's legs. That was fun, apparently.

Games they play:

1. MURPHY'S LAW: Try to come up with the worst possible thing you could say in various scenarios. Vote on winner.

2. FLOOR IS LAVA: Just what it sounds like. You can't touch the floor so elaborate paths made up of pillows, couch cushions, jackets, etc. are strewn about to be able to safely get around the house.

3. PANDA BRAWL: A variation on #2 in which you try to push your siblings into the lava.

4.  FIRST IMPRESSIONS: One person says the name of a well-known book or movie character and a line to say. Everyone else has to say the line the way the character would and then there is a vote to choose the best one. I was recently the champ in speaking like The Incredible's Frozone in saying, "The wisteria is growing like crazy." (Though G said it was too much like regular old Samuel L. Jackson and not enough like Frozone I still won.)

5. GRAVITY'S SIDEWAYS: In which they basically slither around on the floor grabbing on to furniture in order to not float up and away. A variation called "MOUNTAIN CLIMBER" is pretty much the same but involves a grappling hook (which I believe is a plastic pirate's hook-hand and some yarn).