Oh the days of Recess

I decided to look at the journal jar website Tori mentioned to get a blog idea. I want to reminice about my elementary recesses. I mostly remember 5th and 6th grade recesses. At this time of my life I lived in Sandy, UT and went to Park Lane Elementary. I had the coolest teacher in 6th grade, Mr. Gunn. He was a die hard fan of the Utah Jazz (Basketball, not music). He had red hair and big teeth. Each day he would allow us to rest our heads on our desks, dim the lights, and play us some of his favorite music. This is where I first heard Queen. I still remember he liked Symphony candy bars. This is strange because I don't remember much about any of my teachers throughout my life. He was definitely my favorite. My favorite things to do at recess were to play 4-square and jumprope-double dutch style. The jump roping was great, I can't believe I could jump rope with two ropes going opposite directions and even got good enough that I could start by jumping in from the outside after the ropes had already gotten going. I doubt I could last one minute now. If you don't know what 4-square is then I pity you, but I will explain. On the ground was a large square divided into 4 smaller squares. One player stood in each square, and you would play with one red rubber ball about the size of a basketball or a little larger. The person in the number 1 square would serve the ball to whomever and the ball would be passed around randomley until someone got out and each player would move up a square to fill the vacancy and a new player would come in. There were 2 versions of the game, the girly version and the competitive version. The girly version involved terms like "holds" (holding the ball between passes), "babies" (holding the ball and then dropping it so it barely bounce high enough to grab), and "bubbles" (holding the ball and bouncing it in your hands before passing. ) "No slams" was heard a lot in the girly version. We learned the competitive version in P.E. and it was a hit all year. There was no holding of the ball, once the game started you simply hit the ball into another players square as hard and fast or soft and slow ( you wanted to catch them off guard) as you wanted to try to get them out. If another player could not hit the ball after it bounced once in their square into another square they were out. I would love to hear about everyone elses favorite recess games. Leave a comment.