Childhood Fun and Games

It was more than a month ago since I last update my ‘Blog’. But being so forgettable, I forget my username and of course my password. After frantically looking for it, at last I found it in my last year’s diary. It was not a difficult password to remember and yet my forgetfulness got the better of me. To make matters worse I even forgot my eldest son’s birthday on 29th of August

I have been so busy with all sort of errands that I forgot to call him on his birthday. I hope he will forgive me. Yes, I always make it a point to call my children and wish them 'a happy birthday' on their birthdays. It is the least I can do, now that everyone is away and have their family and life.

August is a very auspicious month for us Malaysians. Malaysia gained it’s independence from the British on August 31^st,1957. This year we celebrate Malaysia’s 49^th years of independence. I was still a teenager then and still in school.

But I lived a good life prior to independent. Everythingn was OK in our village. I do not remember any shortage of food or suffer any cruelty from the Japanese.

But I remember, prior to independent, there were some activities in our area. In the absence of any public hall those days, open areas are used for public activities. Most of the time it is in the school field near our house.

Our Excitement

When there aare activities inour village, children are usually more excited than adults. About four or five o'clock in the evening a 'White Giant Screen' will be erected inthe middle of our school field. Sometime later we will see a dark green coloured can with white stripes will be driven slowlywhen we see a white giant screen in the middle of our school field. A van, with dark green color with white stripe will driven slowly around our kampung, informing the people of the activities for the night. The van belong to a government department. In those days, in the absence of Radio or Telivision, announcement are done this way by almost everybody who need to get public attention. They are used to attract people to go to the cinemas, or any celebrations, or shows. It is more fun when circus come to town, because some of the animals will also be paraded for all to see before the real show.

These activities got us all really excited as it meant that we go out at night. That we we will also get to see free entertainments. To attract the crowd,loud music will be blasted until showtime.

Normally, at about eight or nine o'clock in the evening, the music will stop and show will begin. Normally black and white films will be shown. It was quite normal for us to watch documentary films produced by Malayan film Unit or black and white movies from Hollywood. This does not stop us from enjoying ourselves. We would bring our own mats and drinks and booked our place in front of the big white screen. This will be our night out under the clear blue shies. This is the night for us to count the stars.

This is also the time for children to play and run around and have fun at night, which otherwise would be forbidden. Children are never out after Maghrib prayers!

In between the shows, there will be people talking using laud speakers from the van. But we would not be interested in listening to whatever the people were saying. We just wanted to have fun on the field and enjoy the freedom of running around in the open field at night with our friends.

Playing marbles and rubber band with the boys.

There are a few other memorable games I played during childhood. Among others, are the marble and rubber band game. I used to follow the boys around our kampong, to play this two challenging games. I sometimes challenged the boys to play marbles with me. I would smash their marbles on the head and send their marbles flying away from the holes. My strike would mean the boys would not be able to push their marbles into the holes. There would normally be between three to five holes in which they have to aim into, before they could be declared a winner. I would normally beat the boys with my smash and win lots and lots of marbles this way. They are big white marbles, but slightly smaller than the normal golfball. It is quite heavy, because it was made of clay. It can break quite easily.

Playing marbles is very challenging. I would compare playing marbles to the present day games of golf.

In order to win this game, we have to have certain strategies. We have to know the right angle and which part of the marble to be given the strikes, which can give the biggest impact, before striking the blow.

Planning the attack needs lot of concentration. We have to stand in the correct positions, our arms, hands and legs had to be well poise, before attacking our opponents with the force of our fingers, I hardly see children playing marbles these days. I think none of my children knew the game existed. I do not blame them. They were born in the computer technology era and are all IT savvy and hardly go out of the house.

We also played rubber bands by moving the rubber band little by little until it reaches our opponents rubber by our sheer blowing power. If we can push or move our rubber bands on top of our opponents’ then the rubber is ours. I won a lot of rubber band this way. After that, we would tie all the rubber band together into a rope and used that as a skipping rope. This will lead us to another challenging games such as skipping and swinging games.

These games teach us to work as a team. A team of two to four player, is needed to play this game. There will be two players for each side of the team. The first team will be given the responsibility, to swing the rope, while the opponent team will take turn to skip inside the swinging rope.

Each player will hold one end of the rope and begin to swing together in circular motion. This encourages full corporation and understanding from both the player. The longer the rope, the higher will be the swing and the more difficult to control.

The other team member will have to skip and jump inside the swinging rope. Each of them will take turn to skip and jump while at the same time trying to avoid touching the rope. If the rope touches the body, then the game had to stop and the other team member will take over. As the game proceeded, the rope will be tightened by the swinger and will become shorter and shorter and the jump will be more brisk and fast. The team who can skip longest will be the winner.

Another popular game I played with my friends is ‘Kapal Terbang’or aeroplane. It is called ‘Kapal Terbang’ because of the shape drawn on the ground. The rules are quite similar to the present day ‘Hop scotch’.

Other interesting games are ‘Main Selambut’ and ‘Main Congkak’. I am glad to know that up until today, children still play these games. Thanks to the initiative taken by the local authorities to revive some of our traditional games.

I spent a lot of time playing these games with my friends and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The best thing about all these games is that, besides keeping us together, it also teaches us some basic knowledge of mathematics and strategies.

There are many other games that I used to play. Beside games we also sing along special song specific to the games. I find these games and songs very amusing, as it teaches us a lot of values in our culture.

Some interesting feature these songs and games are they teach us to be together, play together and do things together. Some games teach us to appreciate pantun and some even teach the type of trees that we should know and also to know the strength of each type of trees.

One of thesong that I still remember today is when we are playing seiring dua iring, whereby we all will put all our hands on top of each other. While we swing our hands together we will sing. song goes like this:

Seiring dua iring semangkuk dewa-dewa ---Temu tahik keringcap peluk dada. Then all our hands will be drawn away at the same time to hold our own chest. Then one member will knock on the arms and asked what type of tree are you. e.g a person will say 'kok kok kayu apa ni. the person will answer 'kayu cengal, or gabus' , whatever kayu we know that comes to mind. The person will then ask whetther the kayu is 'keras or not'. He will then pull the hands away. Then we will try to protect our tree so hard that we may end up falling together. We had so much fun this way.

We also had a song when we finished playing:

Cap kelepuk kelepik kelepak

wah berangan lokah kulit

Angkat cerana tak dak tebakau

Mari saman kita balik.