Sounds Familiar?

If you were born in the 80's and have played in the streets with your "kalaro", then these would not sound new to you. :-)

• "Monkey-monkey Anabel. How many THE monkeys did you see?" (Let's say) "Five!" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and a riki-tiki-tik and a blue black sheep. Which is true, YES OR NO? "NO!" N-O. Aaaaa-les!

• Nanay, tatay, gusto kong tinapay. Ate, kuya, gusto kong kape. Lahat ng gusto ko ay susundin ko. Ang magkamali ay pipingutin ko. One! One, two! One, two, three!

• "Si Nena ay bata pa. Ang sabi nya ay (while thumb sucking): "Um-ah-um-ah-ah". Si Nena ay dalaga na. Ang sabi nya ay (while flipping her hair): "Um-ah-um-ah-ah"...."

• "Sen-sen of playmates. C'mon and play with me. Are you my darling friend. For every apple tree." Blah blah blah. I forgot the words.

Mountain Biking

As I have mentioned in a previous post, we have a lot of games that we play when we were kids in the early 90's. These games are not the ones you normally see these days like video games. The games that I'm talking about are those that require running (as opposed to sitting for how many hours in front of the computer or television) and interacting with other children (and by this I didn't mean the cyberworld, instead in real life).

After we got past the "street games" phase as I call them, there was this one fad that almost a lot of kids were into. It was the mountain bike. I don't know how it started but ever since mountain bikes became available, most of the kids (and even adults) have one.

I remember I'd ride my bike in the morning and at the afternoon. My friends and I would roam the streets of our village. We may have stopped running around playing games on the streets but biking was a better alternative. It was such a hit that there were even contests from certain soda companies where the prizes are hundreds of mountain bikes. Remember that contest? I had to beg my dad to buy a couple of cases of soda so I could get a better chance of winning a new mountain bike. Haha!

So anyway, in short, we had a lot of exercise. Kids were active. We were active. If only we maintained that kind of lifestyle then maybe we wouldn't be bothering ourselves into going to the gym, dieting and buying Orovo detox or other weight loss alternatives. If only I didn't sell my mountain bike then I'd still be in my normal weight range. Hehe! Oh well... It's not too late.

F-L-A-M-E-S

I was LOL the other day while I was cleaning my room. I wasn't expecting to see a couple of my high school notebooks in our storage room. Memories of my high school came flooding back. You might wonder why I was laughing. No, it's not because of my handwriting (actually it looked better before). I was laughing because I saw the doodles at the back of my notebooks.

The doodles were similar to this picture except for the names (duh!).



I was planning on taking a picture of it but so as not to divulge my full name here in the world wide web (I am scared of identity theft) I just looked up a similar picture in Google images. Plus, I wouldn't want my crush before to find out that I had a crush on him in high school. Ick!

For those who were born yesterday or maybe a couple years back, FLAMES stands for:

F- friends
L- lovers
A- angry/anger
M- married
E- engaged
S- sweethearts

This is usually played by girls. All you need is a pen and paper and of course the most important thing -- the complete name of your crush (middle name included). Now that you have these, the first step is to write your name and the name of your crush in two separate lines. Next, cross out all the letters that are common to both of your names. After that, count the number of crossed out letters from your name and your crush's. Add them all up and using the letters in the word Flames, see which letter it ends using the total number of crossed out letters.

Hahahaha!! I just couldn't help but laugh at what I saw in my notebook. Did you play Flames as well?

10-20 and chinese garter

I feel sad for those kids who have not experienced playing games other than those that need electricity. Most of the kids today are updated when it comes to video games. It is seldom that I see kids running around on the streets playing.

One of my favorite games in the 80's was 10-20 and chinese garter. I'm sure the girls are familiar with these because we would be playing this game at recess time in school, while waiting for the school bus, during the afternoon after coming home from schoolrarely do I see then a guy playing these two games. Hehe!

These games are played using a simple piece of garter or rubber bands (about 7-10 feet long) linked together and then joined at the end to form a circle. The garter is held by one person at each end. For 10-20, the player will have to do 10 jumps per level. The counting starts at 10... 20...30... and so on. Thus the name of the game, 10-20. The objective of the game is for each player to do the jumps correctly as the garter is gradually raised from ankle level, knee level to "under the pwet" (LOL!) then waist, chest level, neck and lastly the head level. The same goes for chinese garter but instead of doing 10 jumps to finish each level, a single jump over the garter is needed.

Kids playing 10-20


Chinese garter


I was more of a pro when it comes to chinese garter. I was able to jump till the neck level without doing the cartwheel. Naks yabang! When in school, we would remove our shoes while playing because it's easier to jump with them on. That's why my mom would get mad at me, pano ba naman mukhang maglalakad na mag-isa ang socks ko sa dumi. Bwahahaha!

Kayo, hanggang sang level kayo?

** Photos courtesy of Google search.