When We Were Growing Up (Part 4 - Games We Played)
Nov 7th, 2007 by Clare
Most of my memorable childhood happenings revolved around school. I looked forward to go to school every day when I was a kid. I loved being with friends and played together. My best friend back then was (and still is) Cheryl, whom I’ve known since Primary One. Together with the other kids from our class, we’d play together every day.
80s’ Babies, do you remember the games you played in school when you were a kid?
Kejar-kejar
Police and Thief
Hide and Seek
Lao Ying Jua Xiao Ji (directly translated into Eagle Catches Little Chicken)
ABC Stop and all the other games that required running and chasing that I have forgotten the names, were the games that I used to play in school.
Apart from that, there was a “tali skip”-fever running around and everyone started playing rope skipping.
The rope that we used back then were not the fancy ropes that kids nowadays bought from the toy shops. We made our own ropes from rubber bands. We linked the rubber bands together into a long stretch of rubber rope and *ta da* we produced our own skipping rope. How creative we were back then! When I said creative, I meant we used what we had from scarce resources and turned them into entertainment 
(Don’t get me to start on what kids nowadays have that we don’t back then!)
These games were, of course, played during recess and after school while waiting for our parents. Running and chasing were strictly prohibited during lessons especially in the class but that never stop us from playing. I am actually amazed at the creativities we had back then. When our stamina was not in training (running and chasing, jumping and skipping), we trained our brains with games as well. We’d create all types of games thinkable using pieces of paper torn from the back of our exercise books (the teachers always wondered why our exercise books were getting thinner and thinner each time we hand in our homework 
). Remember Hangman? Bingo? Crossword puzzle? Win, Lose or Draw? Riddles? Speed Maths? We’d draw on the piece of paper and play the games with those sitting near us in the class.
When we were kids, we looked forward to the end of the year because we were then allowed to bring board games to school and play in the class. No more classes. Teachers were there to supervise only. Sometimes we’d ask the teacher to join our games of Monopoly, Scrabbles or International Chess. We did not limit ourselves to these board games only, we were not boring kids OK!
Early in the morning, before the bell rang, a lot of us would be loitering around the school compound hunting for small, round pebbles for our batu seremban (five stones) game.
Some teachers were thoughtful enough to allow us to access the school storeroom to steal kidnap borrow some papan congkak and guli (marble balls).
A few would play UNO
Unfortunately, no poker was allowed. If not, I think I’d be the God of Gamble already! Muahahaha!!!
Our class was never boring. I mean, with all the games available. How could one be bored, right? We’d just join any game that we felt like playing. No discrimination. Did not even know what racial discrimination was back then. We played happily like any other innocent kids. Now who is the smart alec that injected the racial aspects into our mind and books?
I have forgotten most, if not all, of the subjects taught in school but not the sweet memories of childhood surrounded by friends. Now who says what was taught in school is very useful?
What else that I left out?
u left out chi-ku-pang… cha tum, err… ah seng
I thought those were ‘appetizers’ before playing the catch games to determine who is the person who will do the catching…
Hi, is footkiat who intro me here he said you are writing something regarding 80’s baby story. Erm not bad keep up the good work. I also miss my primary school life. And recently I received a forwarded mail from one of my friend don’t know the email content is originally created by you or not you can take a look the post at my blog by clicking my name
thanks.
Hi! Thanks for dropping by. No, the e-mail content was not created by me. It was the similar e-mail that gave me the inspiration to blog about this series of 80s’ Babies story
One game I bet you never played is ‘Chiak Bak’. Hokkien for devouring of meat.
Played with a tennis ball. Whoever got hold of the ball will throw it as hard as possible toward other players, who will be running around trying to avoid getting hit.
Macho game. Separate the sissy from the men.
Never heard of the game but I bet it must be fun.
ha ha, also a game mah.. ha ha.
During our time, we also play with pencil rubber. Two players put their own rubbers in the opposite corner of the table. Whoever manage to hit his opponent’s rubber down the table declared as winner, and of course winner take all! Back then, parents kept asking why we kept losing our pencil rubbers. It’s like carom.
those were the days…
erm, naughty games… putting thumb tacks under rubber and make gasing out of it….
the girls are mean tho, they twist the staple and let other ppl sit on it… ha ha
You are already naughty when you were a kid, a well known fact, actually. Hahaha!!!
Hi Clare,
It is so nice to know that there are still people like you who can actually remember all of these so called “Jurassic Games”. Well, our world isn’t that far apart. I was there when all these games were played and enjoyed by most of the kids especially in our hometown, SIBU… Those were the happiest moment in my life, I would say. I had a lot of friends and some of them I didn’t even know too, especially my seniors. My favourite games are Police and Thief, Zero Point, Marble, Spinning Top, and Who’s the Monkey. When I think back of all these, how lucky we are to be born in those years. I know there certain things that we didn’t have back then. However, the sweet memories remain till this very moment. We were the creative ones. We had our own signature games that kids these days just couldn’t even think of.
Well, great to be there once and miss all those moments…
It is.
Come to think of it, the game might be among the reason why some of my married friends are still child-less!!:)
Ouch!
er, what about the rubber/eraser game? you move/flip your eraser until it lies on top of your opponent’s eraser and you win. spent a lot of time after during primary school playing that and even made some money from selling back the erasers i won back then haha! then the shooting game, you build this ‘gun’ using a piece of wood (normally in a shape of a long gun, some just use the broom stick) + cloth peg + rubber band. the bullet we used is from this one type of plant.. lol i forgot the name. we will group ourselves into 2 groups and start blasting each other off. that’s real ‘counter strike’ heh! that time no paint ball yet lah..
then this ‘target’ game, where you put a number of rubber bands on a can and you shoot your ‘lastic’ made from rubber bands + nut from a certain distance. and who can forget playing guli. got two types, one with the clear type guli, one the white colour big guli.
miss my childhood. so many games to play and a lot of them involving communicating with kids from other kampung.. running around. if compare to nowadays kids, spending time in front of computer, never really sweat themselves and only meeting people over the internet chit chatting.. haih..
different times..
Wow! You also had a really memorable childhood.
Thanks for sharing!
ade tak cite tentang batu seremban…….