Memories

It seemed like the appropriate time to go through some old things this week, and thinking about the many fun things I remember while growing up.  We couldn't afford to go places, so we created many of our memories in the home.  It's likely I've mentioned many of them before.

1. Skits and Short Plays.  I'm guessing we got this interest from my dad's side of the family since it was traditional for them to perform skits on the Friday evening of the family reunion.  Some of my older siblings even went so far as to create their own skits.  They talk about them once in a while.  There's the infamous PB&J song one of them came up with that we still sing to this day.  My dad was also a teacher who at some point was collecting magazines from a company that were strictly one act or small plays.  I used to read through them a lot.  I think I even did an audio recording of myself doing "The Frog Prince" when I was about 13 or 14.  One of most memorable plays we did out of those books was called, "My Son, the Prince."  It was a story using the King's point of view (or the royal side of the story) of Cinderella.  The cast was all male characters, but we didn't care.  We practiced that play for a long time and performed it for several audiences.  At home it was likely only my mom who watched it, but we took it to our extended families also.  Both sides of the family got us to perform it.  We took our skits to the extended family also.  I remember one night doing skits (there were several, but for some reason I only remember the Queen's Important Papers one--ironic for what's going on right now if you know the skit and what exactly is her important paper).  Another play we did was written by my brother called, "Sarah's Sore Toe."  It was a story about a girl who stubbed her toe on her school books and got sent to the hospital.  This play was performed in our back room (which was quite large) on a stage my brother built himself.
2. Games.  Ah, yes.  Most of these games were outdoors, and we so many neighbors who would join us in a game of kickball or softball if they happened to be passing by.  I'm amazed that we didn't break anything in the houses nearby, but I think we were extra careful about that most of the time.  There were some indoor games also, and they were super fun.  I have great memories of those.  Most of my favorites were dark games.  There are three specific ones that I can think of right now.  We had a basement that went really dark and that's where we played our hide and go seek in the dark.  One person was left upstairs with a flashlight while the others scattered in the basement with all of the lights off.  They could hide anywhere and the person with the flashlight would go looking for them.  Some came up with some clever places to hide.  I loved our version of Murder in the Dark also.  So instead of hiding our hands in or under something, we sat in the closet or in a room where it got pitch dark and did the hand squeezing in the dark.  A minor detail, but I really liked it that way.  Last, but not least, was a game I think maybe my brother came up with, because I don't know anyone else who played it.  It was called, "Detective."  What happened in this game was that a person would draw a piece of paper out from a basket or something else with a letter marked on it determining what part you were to play in the game.  I think V might have been used for Victim and M for Murderer.  There was also someone who controlled the door and the light switch as well as one person who played the detective.  This may have been a spin-off from Murder in the Dark now that I think of it.  The person in control of the lights would switch it off and the murderer would walk around in the dark and killed people by touching them.  In the end, everyone, including the murderer would be lying on the floor dead, and the detective came into the room to investigate and try to find out who the real murderer was.
3. Music.  Even though there wasn't a lot of money to spend on extra things, we did have a basic education in music.  Some of us caught on to it more than others, but it left a great appreciation for it.  I have happy memories of listening to my musical sister sitting at the piano and singing along.  There were several songs I learned from her, though I was too shy about it to share that with her until I asked her to play a song for a choir tryout.  That really shocked her.  Some of the family would join in on a Sunday or whenever we were together to sing along.  One of my favorite memories is when the family used to gather around the piano to sing.  Every person in my family has played a musical instrument besides the piano: Alto Sax; Flute; Trumpet; Clarinet; and Tenor Sax.  One of my siblings was also the drum major in high school.  A lot of music appreciation exists in the family.
4. Electronics.  Perhaps would make more sense to use the term devices, but for some of us in the family, we learned how to use things a lot by experimenting with them.  I have a sibling who is natural with wires, chords, and speakers.  He was able to get the maximum sound out of our system whether it was for playing music, or listening to those old recordings on vinyl of Shakespearean plays.  As a side note, I also tend to play around with devices and miraculously get things to work without blowing them up.  With his recording abilities and my knowledge on how to keep them updated on current programs, we've been able to preserve several things we did while we were growing up.
5. Books.  Speaking of preserving, one of the greatest memories I have while I was extremely young was the times when we gathered together to record ourselves reading books.  Our favorites were from the Peanuts Gang collection.  In fact, my brother enjoyed them so much that he kept doing them after some of my other siblings lost interest.  Those recordings were lost, but several years ago I discovered my oldest sister had in her collection of recordings two stories we did, and I've come across some my brother did years later that weren't lost.  We didn't have a television while I was really young, so books became a great source of entertainment.  Both of my parents were teachers and avid readers, so we grew up with practically a library in our house, with a lot of different options to choose from.  That being said, I would attach to the end of this two recordings I have that are Easter related (since Easter is this weekend), but they are almost 15 minutes long and the same story, and carry too much memory to post on here.  One is one of those stories we did as children, and the other is one I did with my brother on a whim.