What Shall We Do Now?, Dorothy Canfield Fisher [ebook offline reader .txt] 📗

This book is written for children who need help in amusing themselves. It is natural that there should be some difficulty about thinking of games for indoors, or when there is a problem of a large company to amuse; but it is hard to imagine any healthy boy, turned loose out of doors, who cannot take care of his own entertainment. The number of things to do is without limit and the boy so uninventive as to be at a loss with all outdoors before him must be in a sad way. Hence there has been no effort made in this chapter to make an exhaustive list of outdoor games, only those being given which are suggestive, that is, which can be infinitely varied according to your ingenuity; which are, so to speak, the first of a series.

Also, the rules of regular games are not given here (such as baseball, football, hockey, etc.). There are plenty of small manuals, given away with the outfits for these games, which print in much more detail than would be possible here, their principles. More than that, most boys absorb a general knowledge of these games through their pores, and need a book only to settle some small, knotty, disputed point of ruling.

One of the best things to have when out of doors is a ball. There is no end to the uses one can make of it.

The simplest thing to do with a ball is to catch it; and the quicker one is in learning to catch well the better baseball player one will become. Ordinary catching in a ring is good, but the practice is better if you try to throw the ball each time so that the player to whom you throw it shall not need to move his feet in order to catch it. This teaches straight throwing too. Long and high throwing and catching, and hard throwing and catching (standing as close together as you dare), are important. There is also dodge-catching, where you pretend to throw to one player and really throw to another and thus take him unawares. All these games can be varied and made more difficult by using only one hand, right or left, for catching.

A boy with a ball need never be very lonely. When tired of catching it in the ordinary way he can practice throwing the ball straight into the air until, without his moving from his place, it falls absolutely on him each time. He can throw it up and catch it behind him, and if he has two others (or stones will do) he can strive for the juggler's accomplishment of keeping three things in the air at once. Every boy should practice throwing with his left hand (or, if he is already left-handed, with his right): a very useful accomplishment. If it is a solid india-rubber ball and there is a blank wall, he can make it rebound at different angles, one good way being, in throwing it, to let it first hit the ground close to the wall's foot. He may also pledge himself to catch it first with the right hand and then with the left for a hundred times; or to bat it up a hundred times with a tennis racket or a flat bit of board. An interesting game for one is to mark out a golf course round the garden, making a little hole at intervals of half a dozen yards or so, and see how many strokes are needed in going round and getting into each hole on the way.

All kinds of races are easy to arrange and these can be repeated from day to day as your proficiency increases. Here are a few.

The Spanish race, sometimes called the Wheelbarrow race, is played by forming the boys into two lines, one standing back of the other, and the front row on their hands and knees. At a signal to begin, each boy on the back row takes hold of the ankles of the boy is front of him and lifts his knees off the ground. The boy in front walking on his hands, and the boy behind trundling him along, make the greatest haste possible. The pair who first reach the goal are the winners.

Races may be run, hopping on the right foot, or on the left, or with both together, or with first a hop and then a jump. It is well to appoint one of the boys umpire during these odd races, to see that they are run fairly and none of the rules agreed upon are broken.

A sack race is fun. Each boy is tied into a gunny sack and shuffles his way to the goal. A substitute for this is the three-legged race, run by two boys. They stand side by side, and the right leg of one is tied to the left leg of the other and so with three legs between them they must somehow get to the goal.

Hands and knees races, backward races (run with your back to the goal), races with burdens on your back, or balancing a pole across your hand or on the tip of your finger—there is no limit to the ones you can invent.

But the best ones, after all, are the plain old trials of speed. There is no more fun than a good running race, and a walking race is next to it. Bicycle races are apt to be dangerous and a course that is very wide should always be selected.

Quoits is a game not played as much as it should be by American boys. It is easy to arrange, for although there is an outfit sold in the toy shops, a home-made one is just as good. It consists of a collection of horseshoes and a stake driven in the ground—certainly not a difficult apparatus to assemble. The stake should not project more than an inch above the ground and the players, according to the grown-up rules, should stand about fifteen yards away from the stake (which is usually called "the hub"). But for boys the distance from the hub can be determined by your skill. You may increase it as you improve with practice. Every player has a certain number of quoits (horseshoes) and standing at a fixed distance from the hub he tries to pitch them so that they will go as near as possible to the hub. Some very good players can cast a quoit so that it falls about the hub. This is called a "ringer" and counts ten, but it is a rare shot. Every one pitches his quoits and then all go to the hub and reckon up the score. The one whose quoits lie nearest to the hub counts one point for each quoit, but each quoit entitled to count must be nearer the hub than any of the opponents' quoits. This continues until the score is complete. People usually play for eleven. This game can be played with flat stones instead of horseshoes and with any rules that you choose to make.

Duck on a Rock is a variation of Quoits which is excellent fun. One of the players, chosen by counting out, puts a stone (called in this game the "duck") about as big as his fist, on the top of a smooth rock and stands near it. All the other players have similar "ducks" and try to dislodge the one on the rock by throwing their stones, or ducks at it. As soon as each has thrown his duck he tries to watch his chance to run up to it and carry it back before the player standing by the rock can touch him. When some one knocks off the duck from the rock the "it" (the player by the rock) must put it back before he can tag any of the players. This is therefore, of course, the great time for a rush of all the players to recover their ducks and get back to their own territory before the "it" can tag them. If any player is touched by the "it" while attempting to rescue his duck he must become "it" and put his duck on the rock.

Bowling is the best of sports but this usually needs too much apparatus for the average boy to have. Nine pins, however, can be arranged in a rough sort of a way, by setting up sticks and bowling at them with round apples. Your own ingenuity will devise ways to use the materials you find about you.

Hop-scotch is a great favorite which scarcely needs a description, although there are various ways of marking the boards. The game is played by any number of persons, each of whom kicks a small stone from one part to another of the diagram by hopping about on one foot. The diagram is drawn on a smooth piece of ground with a pointed stick or on a pavement with a bit of chalk. The most usual figure is given here.

To begin, a player puts a pebble or bit of wood into the place marked 1, and then, hopping into it with his right foot, he kicks the counter outside the diagram. Then hopping out himself, he kicks it (with the foot on which he is hopping) into the part marked 2. He hops through 1 to 2, kicks the counter out again, and follows it out. This continues until he has kicked the counter in and out of every space in the diagram, without stepping on a line, or so casting the counter that it rests on a line. If this occurs he is put back a space, and it is the turn of the next player. Each one plays until he has made a fault, and when it is his turn again, he takes up the game where he left off. The one who first gets through the required figures is the winner.