J is for Jump Rope & Jacks on Think-Back Tuesday

The photo below is borrowed from a source other than my personal scrapbook. I have very few pictures of myself as a child. And maybe zero of myself on the playground, except in my mind. So, gracias, Google.





Once more you get a twofer here at A Penchant for Pens. I'm enjoying this nudge to intentionally chronicle my memories, but I enjoy reading others' also on the same topic.

Funny thing about memories: they are seldom chronological. On any given day, I find myself remembering my life as a mom with a five-year-old, and then I recall something when I myself was five, and in another flash I'm 27 or 15 or 42. The alphabet is guiding my thoughts for these memoirs via the A to Z Challenge.

Today I'm thinking back to playground games. One of my all-time favorite activities was jumping rope. It took me a little while to "find my rhythm," but once I did, I was hooked. It's hard to believe the stamina I had as a kid; where'd it go? I remember contests to see who could jump for the most minutes, who could jump rope on one foot, who could do it backwards, who could cross their arms and keep jumping the rope from that criss-crossed position. I remember how fun it was to have a friend jumping inside the rope with me! And how about multi-player games with a long rope to see how many people can jump in and stay in at the same time?

One thing I remember: it was a girls-only activity. If boys jumped in, it was only to make us mad. Which it did.


Now for some playground / "J" questions for Think-Back Tuesday.

1. Did you enjoy jumping rope, and if so, were you a competitive type like me, wanting to win contests?

2. Were you ever seriously hurt on the playground?

Yes. It involved a sliding board. I remember in seventh grade our entire Christian school junior high and high school went to Promised Land Camp for a weekend retreat. The first evening there, while waiting for dinner to be served, a bunch of us decided to use our spare time playing like "little kids" on the sliding board. When a backlog of bodies was first noticed, someone had the bright (testosterone-induced?) idea to see how many of us could fit on the slide. One, two, three, seven, 11, 19, 24...and counting. More and more until... the entire aluminum sliding board collapsed-- at the curve--where I was seated, my feet wrapped underneath it. I can still remember the pain I felt when I heard "Thirty-threeeeeeeeee!!"

Everyone was screaming and pushing and laughing and cheering and scrambling to either be part of --or free from the mass pile of teens on the ground. No one could hear me wailing. Beneath the heap of humans and twisted aluminum I lay, with my ankle seemingly crushed and swelling at the same time. It took quite a while to get the proper medical treatment because the school nurse was also the head cook (home ec teacher/jill-of-all-trades). To this day when I see idiots of any age squeezing themselves together on a sliding board, my ankle throbs. I spent the rest of the weekend hobbling around with an ice pack.

3. Speaking of jills, did you play jacks?

I remember learning how in sixth grade, and giving it a try at school at recess for about a week. All that hand-eye coordination was rather nerve-wracking for me. My hands were small and I could only hold about four jacks at once. Like jumping rope, it wasn't easy to play jacks on the ground while wearing a dress.

4. Jack is usually a nickname for John. Are there any Jacks in your family, or anyone named John?

Yes, I have a brother-in-law named John. he is the third generation--as in John III, so he goes by Jay. I'm glad he doesn't go by Jack because he married my sister, Jill.

5. John III:XVI is the Roman numeral version of the Bible's most popular verse. Can you quote it? How about quoting it in a foreign language?

I can quote it in French, because it was required for our French II class in Christian high school. It goes something like this (please, you French readers, do not hold this against me. I'm going from memory here, and I haven't been in high school since the year aluminum foil was invented):

" Car Dieu a tante aime le monde, qu'il a donne son Fils unique...."

Oh, drat! I can pronounce the words, but I'm not recalling the spellings, and that could be sacrilegious if I messed up. I just remember the ending..."la vie eternelle. " Life eternal, and that makes me happy in any language! Ma vie eternelle began the moment that the unique (one and only) son of God entered my heart and forgave my sins--all of them, past, present, and future, and declared me righteous. Declared it the way he declares everything--with authority. Merci pour the mercy de Dieu!

---------- If you want to answer the preceding questions on your blog, simply leave a comment and link back to mine so we can find you. We can jump rope or skip from blog to blog -- or do a virtual (painless) pile-up on the slide. Can you say, "33"?