Playground Games - part 2

Is it Home Base, Ghoul, Jail, Goal (pronounced jail in England)? The debates are endless. Here's an interesting wiki entry on the game "Tag" and it's variants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(game)

I'm particularly impressed that Flashlight Tag is mentioned in there. This is a game we spent many nights playing in our neighborhood in Minnesota. What is particularly impressive is that the variants of the game as described are exactly how we played it. Ghoul was a big massive rock in our next door neighbor's yard - even though their kids never played.

In Minnesota, the summer nights aren't dark enough for flashlight tag until around 9:30 or 9:45. Many of us had 10 o'clock curfews. So, often it was a rushed game. Or we would beg and beg for just 15 more minutes. And on Fridays and Saturdays we'd often get a curfew reprieve until 10:30.

I was 12 or 13 and had a pre-teen crush on a neighbor boy. I remember we'd often hide together and then steal a little kiss while waiting for whoever was "it" to come and find us. I'm pretty sure my mom knew this which is why I didn't often get a curfew extention. She had a saying, "There's nothing I want you doing after 10:00 that you couldn't have done before." I think she and my dad heard that one from my Nana when they were dating. Nana was right.