Jan 21 2009
Annie-Over
‘YOUTH WOULD BE AN IDEAL STATE if it came a little later in life” (H.H. Asquith)
When I was a child (somewhere between the Dark Ages and the Vietnam war) there was a marvelous place where my friends and I went almost every day to play. It was called O-U-T-S-I-D-E. For those of you under 30, who may not be familiar with it, you can usually find it located right outside your house, and at the right time of year there is green stuff and blue stuff out there. The green stuff is known as grass, and the blue stuff is the sky. This was ALL we had to play with ~ there was no Play Station, no iPods, no video game you could hold in your hand. In fact, we had no “buttons” to push, (except maybe our mothers’ ~ who would yell “Go Outside!!)
Some of us played a game, called “Annie Over”. It was played with a ball (not a football, not a basketball, nor baseball), just a plain old round ball of assorted sizes. Children would stand on each side of a small lawn building (ours was the tool shed) and throw the ball over, yelling “Annie Over”. NO, I don’t know why it was Annie, I guess it could have been Charlotte, or Kathy or Bob; but for us it was Annie. The building was tall enough that we could not see over it, so we did not know at what point the ball would come flying over. We didn’t even keep score as far as I remember (Geez, that was a stupid game now that I think about it!)
We also played “”Cowboys and Indians”. Seems like most of the time, the boys got to be the cowboys and the girls had to be the Indians. I don’t know exactly why that was, as our “guns” and “horses” were all equal (unless your stick was bigger than the other guys stick). Some of the fancier cowboys got to ride the broomstick or mop handle, but only if you could get it out of the house without your mother seeing you. We would run and scream and “shoot” each other, falling on the ground and rolling around in all sorts of horrible “death” scenes. In the sense of fairplay, if you got shot you had to stay on the ground for a short time, but as the invisible bullets were hard to track, it was up to you whether you were “kilt” or just “winged”.
We had bicycles and rollerskates. The bicycles were a little less sophisticated than they are now, and the skates were the kind you had to clamp onto your shoes. These were great fun, if you were lucky enough to live on a PAVED road. The skates were useless if you lived on the gravel roads, but sometimes you could find a sidewalk or a paved driveway to skate on.
Those of you who enjoyed some of these activities, can also remember the skinned knees and rock bruises that came with it. If children today went to school with the number of cuts, bruises, scrapes and bumps that were normal for us, the parents would be locked up!
All those things aside, I would trade a year off my life to go back for one more game of “Annie Over” or another “shot” at my cousin, Larry. Heck, I’d just like to have that kind of energy for one more day!
“Annie Over” - coming your way!
