Tag You're It!

I was out early this morning, enjoying the great outdoors and taking a few pictures. I walked down the fence row to say good morning to the cows. A few of the calves were chasing each other through the field and it took my mind back to the carefree days of my childhood when my sisters and I so often played together.

When I was a young'un we didn't have Playstation to occupy our every waking moment. During the summer months we were either playing or working. You could guarantee that in the late evening hours after the corn had been shucked and the taters had been hilled, us kids would be chasing each other around the yard. We played games like Freeze Tag, Hide-n-Seek, Ghost in the Graveyard, Red-Light-Green-Light, and others. All of these involved someone being "It" and the others either hiding or running trying to keep from being tagged. I delighted in those kinds of games. Darting behind trees, cowering in a ditch, flattening against the chicken house, you just never knew where I would spring out. I can still hear my sisters screaming and running through the yard in reckless abandonment trying not to get tagged. Of course I was always faster than they were and could easily catch them. But, I would have mercy and cut them a little slack. We didn't keep any kind of score, we just played to be playing.

Things were so different back then. It is sad nowadays to see kids that don't have a clue how to play those kinds of games. They are occupied with video games, the Disney Channel, the Internet and other mind numbing things. They think that Freeze Tag is a character in a video game that has the power to freeze. Oh, if they only knew the joy of being in the great outdoors, running through the grass barefooted, climbing a tree, catching a jar full of lightning bugs, or eating green persimmons.

I like to think that my kids are pretty well rounded. We try our best to put limits on their indoor activities and force them to go outside on a regular basis. I'd say they will never know how to hill taters but they know how to catch a lightning bug and play Freeze Tag. It does my heart good to every now and then hear one of them yell out, "Tag You're It!"