SoCS – Back to the Playground

Linda‘s prompt had me back on the playground today. If you want to join in the fun, Check out Linda’s blog – she spells out the rules and you can read the the contribution of other bloggers.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “may.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

Linda might have been thinking about the fact today is the first day of May, but that’s not where my mind went.

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My post title is a little misleading. Where I grew up there was no playground. Well, there was at school, but that was 6 miles away. Our playground was the wide open spaces.

If we could gather enough kids together, we would find a big yard and play things like  Red Rover, Kick the Can, Rock School, Simon Says, and Mother May I.

Mother May I is a strange game when you dissect it a bit. If you are not familiar, one person is designated as the mother. All the rest of the kids line up a distance from mother with the goal of being the first to reach mother.

The game is played by asking questions:

”Mother, may I take one giant step forward?”

Mother would respond with either yes you may, or no you may not.

Then another asks. “Mother, may I take three small steps forward?”

Mother may then respond with something like “No you may not, but you may take one step backwards”.

You see, mother has all the control in determining who reaches her first. That doesn’t seem fair! Mother holds all the cards.

Perhaps the game’s origins hail back to the idea that mother is the boss and what she says goes! It sure was that way with my mother!

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