RE-TWEET IT!
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On Twitter, I found a link to a study highlighting the harmful effects of text messaging on mobile phones for today’s school kids. Among the reasons stated was that it distracted students during lessons.
I shared it with my followers – and my young friend, Meghna, a famous blogger, pointed me to a post she had about how texting improved the language of students!
My response was that of course, she’d see it that way – and mentioned our pre-texting classroom fun activities. After all, while there definitely are some serious problems related to excessive texting, surely there’s a touch of pomposity about researchers who conveniently forgot how they idled away their time, exercised their imagination and entertained themselves under teacher’s watchful eye – during class!
Meghna said:
“We are a different world altogether 
))”
This blog post is a brief visit to that “different world” – before texting invaded the classroom. Here are a few things we did at school to pass the time – and I’m happy if you’ll add to the list by leaving a comment below.
1. Playing ‘book cricket’. A thick textbook was chosen (often geography!) Pages were opened at random. You scored 2, 4 or 6 runs for page numbers ending with 2, 4 and 6, singles were scored by opening a page ending with 8 – and a ZERO meant you were OUT! The match would get as elaborate as the boredom of the class merited – with some involving two full innings of teams of 11 each!
2. Chalk fights. As a monitor or class leader, one had a significant advantage over one’s ‘enemies’ in this ‘war’ – because you had the key to the ammunition dump… the class stock cupboard! (Others were limited to the tinier bits left behind by the teacher conducting the previous lesson). Tiny white missiles soared and whizzed through the air, as opposing camps fired every time the teacher was writing on the board – and others ducked and hid to avoid getting caught in the cross-fire!
3. Playing ‘mini cricket’. This was more elaborate, intricate, and – most limiting of all – required a back-bench and a lenient or careless teacher to get away with. Stumps were formed of geometry boxes. Rulers served as bats. Erasers cut and shaped into balls were hurled across desktops, to be square-cut or cover driven to ‘fielders’ at neighboring desks!
4. Tic-tac-toe. Not very popular because it’s too short – and too easy to end with a ‘draw’ each time. But still, it helped fill in many a rainy day’s drudgery!
5. Claim and Name your square. A grid of dots was made. On your turn, you could connect any 2, only vertically or horizontally, never diagonally. If you completed a square, you got to name it as yours – and play another turn. Challenging – and we would happily while away an entire boring session on this one!
6. Battleships. The board-game’s equivalent – on paper, with pen or pencil. Tanks, airplanes and submarines were taken down, blown up or torpedoed – until there was only one man standing!
7. This one’s a doozy. I don’t think it ever had a name! Opponents started at diagonally opposite corners of a sheet of paper torn out of one’s ‘rough note’ – with five dots. First player places a pencil on dot #1 – holds it in place – and ’strikes’ with an index finger, to shoot AT the opponent’s dot. Wherever the stroke ends, the dot is now moved to. Then player 2 takes his turn. A ‘kill’ happens when a strike passes through the opponent’s dot – the winner being the one who takes out all the opponent’s dots first.
8. Beard the Bahadur. A fun, creative and relaxing way to deal with dull, drab history lessons – and indulge one’s wildest fantasies and let imagination run on a rampage – was to adorn august historical figures with cooling glasses, head-gear, fancy ties or suits, and facial hair of various genres. The end results were fascinating and funny. I still remember one of Tipu Sultan – and like I said before, it has been TWENTY-FIVE years since!
There were very likely many more. Because surely 12 years of schooling had more than a few hours to enjoy wastefully in the civilized prison called the classroom.
But age dims memories – maybe blissfully so, because within those harsh walls are also imprisoned some less pleasurable reminiscences. After all, school is not a bed of roses!
And Mark Twain’s advice rings loud and clear in many a schoolboy’s ears:
“I never let school interfere with my education!”
{ 1 comment }
LOL!! That was really an interesting piece of information. Specially for teens like us.
Playing ‘mini cricket’ in the classroom with really look-alike cricket playground with supporting pieces in the classroom at “that time” and get away with it without teacher’s scolding is something daring and unimaginable. Kudos to you for trying such wonderful entertainments during class and still managing to become a renowned doctor!!
Even tough the methods you kids used to entertain in your time are entirely different from what we do these days, I think there is still scope for borrowing one or two ideas
You rightly said that the fond memories remind you of the revelation that school is not a bed of roses. Even for me, its thorns always remind me of the roses
Thank you for sharing such beautiful memories for me and others to enjoy!!
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