I want to write something for my blog and I don’t feel compelled towards anything in particular. It has been a cloudy and sometimes rainy day. I started to go for a walk a short time ago, but when I looked out, I decided not to bother. I’ve been busy with small chores most of the day, and walked a bit in the villa from time to time.
At this point in my life, I find myself looking back at times, trying to remember what the world was like when I was young. Some things I remember, but a lot is gone. We probably should record our thoughts and activities on how our world is from time to time, and I occasionally did that, but not enough to help much. And in the earlier years, I never kept the writings I did.
I was thinking of the things we did to occupy ourselves when weather kept us inside, in those pre-television, pre-computers and computer games back in the dark ages. The game that came to mind first was a word spelling game called Hang-man. I believe my daughters played this game too when they were young. Our younger son grew up alone, but probably would have been more interested in his trucks and other such occupations.
For the uninitiated, one person chose a word, lined out a space for each letter. The other player, or players, guessed a letter. If you guessed an incorrect letter, a part of a stick person was added to the pre-drawn ‘stick’ scaffold. If you didn’t guess all the correct letters before all the stick parts were added, you lost the game and were “hanged.”
The name of the game is gruesome I suppose, but I don’t believe any of us thought of it in the context of anyone being hanged. I know I certainly didn’t. I won’t expound on that, except to say that I, personally, am against hanging anyone and do not see it as a viable means of punishment. However, the game was fun at the time; it also helped a bit with spelling words, and was played without evil intent.
