Hopscotching

I played hopscotch today. And it was marvelous.

The little guy wanted to play outside and after a roller coaster winter and early spring, it was gorgeous out. Did he want to bring anything with him? Toys, a ball? Nope. Armed simply with a box of chalk he wanted nothing more than to be out amid the sunshine and the grass of our backyard. And he wanted to be with me.

How could I say no?

He had been asking a lot about hopscotch lately. I’m not sure if he saw it in a cartoon or tv show, but thought this would be the perfect opportunity to show it to him and let him experience it himself. A few scratches of chalk on the sidewalk and our game board was set to go. I fished a small rock from a bucket of green waste headed to the curb and off we went on a crash course in hopscotch.

He didn’t care for it.

Well I shouldn’t say that. He was interested…until he had to jump on one foot. He had little care or desire and quickly walked off to the grass to look for sticks.

“You can play it, though,” he told me as he carried on with his own private adventure.

It could have ended there. I could have moved on. For some reason, though, I didn’t. Instead, I tossed the stone and off I went. One foot, the other, the first, two feet, etc, etc.

Maybe it’s because for several years I’ve lacked real exercise, but I loved it. I could have done it all day.

It wasn’t long, however, before I was wanted elsewhere and soon I had to leave hopscotch behind for a game of ‘chase the leprechaun,’ something Meg made up for him while outside enjoying some of the unseasonably warm weather around St. Patrick’s Day. He chased me around the yard as I shouted in a little Irish accent and got myself so exhausted, I admit needing to take a few rests upon the grass before we picked things up again. Hey, at least I got some sort of exercise in.

That whole afternoon out there got me thinking a bit. I feel like there are so many times in today’s world where we always feel the need to have something, to be entertained by something. But here we were armed with nothing more than some chalk and the sticks and flowers we found out in the yard along with our imaginations. And we had a blast.

There was a time, not too long ago, before tablets, smartphones, etc, when that’s how we did entertain ourselves. We went outside and what was there was what we came across and used to the best way we could.

There’s something almost…primal, reminiscent, rejuvenating about just running around, sitting in grass, looking at stocks and stones, and just skipping across a hopscotch board of chalk.

It felt good to get back to that. I should do it more often.