Reading through the brief for the Toys on Hive Contest, many good but sadly some bad memories also crossed my mind.
I will start off with a rather bad one when I was about 8 years old.
We had this strange family in the neighborhood; the house they lived in was a large double story with dense overgrown foliage around it. The place was real scary looking, so no wonder that everyone called it “The Witches Palace”.
Well, being a friendly child who loved to be friends with everyone, I befriended the girl that lived in that house. Her name was Catherine, Cathy for short; she was slightly older than me.
My other friends tried warning me against her, but I followed my own heart and we became friends.
Cathy saw a book I had, “Enid Blyton Fairy Tales”, and she asked that we do a swop.
I could take a floppy doll that I liked and she would take the book; and so after these negotiations, I became the proud owner of a floppy doll and she had the book so we were both happy.
I played housey-housey and Doctor-Doctor with my new pride and joy; I even named her Susan. Things were just perfect for a week.
Then all hell broke loose!
My new friend had turned into a wicked witch and arrived at my house with her big brother, looking all sullen; I thought she was about to burst into tears.
“You have to give my doll back“, she said. “My mother called the police and they are going to come and arrest you if you don’t give it back”.
Well! It felt as if my heart had been ripped out at that moment, it just wasn’t fair. I had become so fond of Susan and she was part of my family of dolls now.
I clung onto Susan for dear life; no, I wasn’t going to give her up without a fight!
“Where is my book then”, I cried. “I want it back”!
Grabbing the doll from me, she ran off shouting, ”What book, you didn’t give me any book”.
“Liar, liar, your pants is on fire, you evil witch”, I yelled back through tears; my heart was broken, Susan was gone forever.
Well that was the end of that friendship.
I didn’t make any effort to get my book back, being a naive little 8 year old, I was afraid of the police.
I stayed quite clear of the witch and never spoke to her again, anyway they moved not long after that, good riddance to bad rubbish I thought!
If one ordeal wasn’t enough, oh boy! We had some naughty boys in our neighbourhood who use to play ”Tok Tokkie”, a prank kids played on the neighbours. They would knock on their door and run away and hide.
Well, I decided to join them, and was nominated to do the knocking.
It so happened that Mr. Smith down the road was ready and waiting for us, before my hand reached the door, it swung open and there he was, bigger than life itself; or so it felt!
All three of us froze in our tracks, our hearts in our throats and we tried explaining to no avail.
Mr. Smith was going to have our butts and that was that. He grabbed all three of us by the scruff of our necks and took us to our parents, one by one.
Mr. Smith had our butts alright, we were sore for days from a good spanking. That was the end of that game for us.
I remember playing Hopscotch, mostly a girl’s game. It’s a number of squares outlined on the ground and then a bottle top or other object is thrown in a number in one of the squares. One would then hop into the square to retrieve the object. I think children still play this game today.
Another game I loved playing is the board game snakes and ladders.
On rainy days, we use to sit around the kitchen table and play snakes and ladders, and listen to Springbok Radio. My dad always listened to ”Squad Cars”, then on a Sunday nights there was a story called the “Creaking Door”, it was so scary that I used to jump into bed with my parents after listening to it.
My friend @lizelle also spoke of this, so one can see we come from the same era :)
When doing road trips in the car to my grandmother’s farm which was an hour and a half away, we used to play “I Spy with my little eye” and had loads of fun with that, laughing all the way to grandmother’s farm.
We had to keep ourselves amused as children in those days as there were no cellphones and computers back then.
I actually think we had way more fun making up games in the outdoors than today’s children who rely on technology to entertain.
I could tell you many more stories, but will keep those for another time and so my story comes to an end for the Toys on Hive Contest #4 - Childhood Memories, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did telling it!
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my childhood
memories.
