The Best Games Ever

Do you remember any games you made up as a child? Some of the best times I ever had when I was little was when we played games we had made ourselves. We had so much more fun playing our own things such as "Paper men" or "Sea Saucy," than we ever did playing with games and toys from the store. No matter how hard people may try, they can never sell anything that beats the fun of our games. Of course, if we went back and played them now, they wouldn't be as much fun, but then they were a blast. Half the fun was creating the games.

"Run from Cars" was the church kids' classic. The game is basically explained in the name. When we saw a car coming down the street that passed the church building, we would all run to the steps before the car passed us. Now if we decided to be really brave, we would run from one tree in the yard to the other and then back to the steps. If the car passed us when we weren't on the steps, then we were "run over" and we had to go recover in the "hospital." Occasionally we would add in some new rules, but that was the main way we played.

Another church kids' classic was "Sea Saucy." It was about as weird as it sounds. One person was chosen to be the "Sea Saucy." He would live in the area of the building designated as the "sea." Everyone else would go to the area designated as the "beach." Then they would count to ten to let the sea saucy hide. After counting, they would try to enter the sea and get back to the beach without getting caught by the sea saucy. If someone got caught, they were the sea saucy. There was also a rule that if we said "sea saucy," the sea saucy could come onto the beach for a short period of time.

Another game we often played was making skits and acting them out for the adults. Batman, Scooby Doo, and even the Christmas story was acted out. We especially did this at my grandparent's house with all of the cousins. Eventually, however, I believe the adults got annoyed with skit after skit.

Finally, the last game I will mention, and one of my favorites, was "Paper men." Somehow we got into creating and drawing little characters on paper, and then drawing houses and castles for them. We would then cut the people out and play with them in our homes we had made for them. I loved creating stories, so I created almost all of my characters. Often we would have what we called "blow battles." In "blow battles," we grouped our people into two armies. Next we would all blow on the poor little paper people. Any of the people who were flipped over were considered dead or wounded, and the ones that were still face up would continue on to the next round. Who needs those little plastic army men? Paper people work wonderfully.

In conclusion, I just want to encourage parents out there to encourage their kids to be creative. Computers and game systems can be good things, but using their minds to create their own games can be just as fun and more so (and definitely cheaper).