Nearly every recess in my grade school years, a group of my girlfriends would find the longest jump rope and elect two girls to be the rope flippers.
“Cinderella, dressed in yellow
All dressed up to find a fellow
By mistake she kissed a snake
How many doctors will it take?”
Then the jump count was on. We got to be pretty good at timing our entrance, jumping into the spinning rope.
We took the challenge so seriously, onlookers might have assumed a gold medal was involved.
One of the best jump rope jumpers was my friend and classmate, Tootie. The bummer for her was that none of the rest were nearly as tall, so we couldn’t make the rope flip around high enough for her. Tootie, such a good sport, was sort of pushed into being the chief jump rope flipper, with the second sometimes being a teacher on the other end of the rope.
“Not last night but the night before, 24 robbers came a’knockin at the door….”
That was our cue to be ready to jump in, then out, while another jumper stood behind us to jump in without messing up the spinning jump rope. If we made it to 24 without messing up, those imaginary robbers were sent to jail forever. We would whoop it up like we had solved a criminal force in our midst.
We jumped to “Mabel, Mabel, set the table, do it as fast as you are able!” And whatever number we reached without messing up the flow of the spinning rope was the number of kids in Mabel’s family.
We must have been somewhat obsessed with strings of all sizes, because this same group of my friends and I would play hand puzzles with string on the days we couldn’t go outside to jump rope.
I felt we surely were the most talented in all the land no matter which size string we were manipulating. My cousin Connie and I could do cat’s cradle with any size string we laid hands on. I remember getting on the phone to call Connie, who lived next door at that time. “Mom went to the meat market, and I grabbed the best string off the package as soon as we got home. Can you come to my house? If you can’t, I’ll bring it to school tomorrow!”
I’ve thought so many times how little we had in the way of toys, but it really never seemed to matter. My very best memories of times with friends and cousins had nothing to do with toys, but with the most simple resources and time with one another. What one kid could think up became the game of the moment.
In the end, we were probably quite lucky to have so little. No one had much in the way of treasure. It taught us teamwork and great use of imagination, bouncing ideas off of one another. How lucky we all were born in the best place and time, a time of simple joys.
