My sister Sherry and I used to play “Fancy Lady” (such creativity in game naming!) when we were little. It included opening a jar of spaghetiOs, one of us would eat really prim and proper with our pinky in the air. The other would snort the spaghetiOs down like a pig, chew loudly, and smear their mouth with the sauce. The fancy lady would stare with distain at the porky lady. That’s it. That was the game. But it was really a lot of fun, and we always fought to be the messy lady.
We also used to play “The Pillow Game” (limitless creativity I tell ya). It involved throwing a pillow back and forth trying to catch it, points to the one who caught it the most.
Now my kids make up their own games. They have: “Can’t touch the floor” “Win” and “blanket-ball”. My Mullet genes passed along the super-clever game naming skills. “Win” is when they’re eating lunch, whoever cleans their plate first gets of the chair, runs around cheering and yelling then climbs back on the chair. It is fun for them. It is loud for me.
“Can’t touch the floor” is just like it sounds. They walk around in the living room, but can you guess…? without touching the floor. It involves lots of pillows and blankets being drug all over, and lots of messes being made.
Once I tried to teach them the pillow game. They looked at me with big eyes like “What kind of lame-o game is this?”
Seriously though, I love watching kids making up their games. I love their creativity, or lack of it. I love to see them poke each other in the eye with a fork. Just kidding, that happened this morning. I can’t wait to see when they’re older what kind of games they’ll come up with.
What kind of games did your children invent?
Andrea Esh 
Such a fun post! As kids, we made up ALL kinds of games too. And we were about as creative in our naming of them too! One of ours was “100 people” where my sister and I pretended we were living in a family that had 100 kids. Far out, huh?My kids also play the “can’t touch the floor game” but I don’t even think they have a name for it. They pretend the floor is “hot lava” or that it is full of snakes. How scaaarrryyy!The boys go out in the woods and play “swamp logging” in this spot where the water tends to gather. They play pretend rodeo. For some of my kids, it seems like EVERYTHING is a game, which gets a little old.
I had to laugh at your “fancy lady” game. Hilarious. My brothers and I used to have all kinds of our own games, but I can’t remember offhand what many of them were. I love when kids have creativity and don’t want to just sit around all the time!
me and my sisters would lay on the couch both our heads on the opposite ends and our feet touching in the middle. We would shout out foods and if it was some thing we really liked we would pump our feet really fast and if it was something we though was gross, we would act like we could hardly make them go. I don’t think we had a name for it. Sounds ridiculous now!!!
we used to play a lot of made up games at home too. We used to take a mirror off the hall wall, carry it in front of us so we couldn’t see our feet, and walk around the house pretending we were walking on the ceiling. =) There was a game we played turning all the lights in the house off (where were mom and dad while the house was so dark? is my question today), crawling around the house with an IT. I think we called that Lion. Mom also used a game at mealtime to teach us our manners. She called it button. We would beg to play, and our table manners got drilled into our heads while playing. I love imaginiation. My children- the rage at school for awhile was dodge ball. They came home and played dodge pillow (their name) in the living room. They also play volleyball with a balloon over the coffee table. Not sure if that one is named. Maybe they are a bit more sophisticated with their games. They also tear around the house loudly until their mother tells them to quit running. I think it is a game, but have no idea what they are playing. I guess since I am their mom, I could find out =) I am sure there are more, but what are they?
@damys – that is hysTERical!!!!!We used to play don’t-touch-the-floor in our school cafeteria!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Imagine. I tried it at home but it was never as much fun. The boys haven’t gotten too sophisticated yet with imaginary games. The main thing they do is take turns jumping off the couch. Adam plays fireman a lot and puts out fires and does that sort of imaginary play but not the completely imaginary stuff.
@damys – Ok that is hilarious. Seriously creative.
We were too cool for words! 🙂