What games or toys did you enjoy most when you were young？

When I was a child, we didn’t have tablets, phones, video games or endless channels on TV.Life was simple. Looking back, some of my happiest memories come from the games we played as children. 

My favorite games as a child could be divided into two kinds—outdoor games and indoor games. On sunny days, we couldn’t wait to rush outside to play in the yard, in narrow alleys, or open fields. We didn’t need toys or screens; all we needed was each other. 

The most popular game in our neighborhood was hide-and-seek. It’s such a simple game, but oh, how we loved it !  I remember seeing Jordan, Jake and Forest play hide and seek , but they normally play indoors while we played outdoors most of the time .  The rule is the same as how they play today . One child would be chosen to be “it.” They’d close their eyes and count to twenty or thirty while the rest of us scattered and found the best hiding spots we could. Some of us would hide behind trees or crouch behind large water jars. Others climbed up into a tree or squeezed into narrow spaces behind old doors. The suspense of waiting in silence, trying not to breathe too loudly, and the excitement of being found—or not—was thrilling. If we got caught, we’d scream and laugh and run, even though that meant we lost. And still, we played round after round, never wanting to stop, even after the sky turned dark. I remember nobody wanted to leave even though parents were shouting us to go home for dinner.  

Another outdoor favorite was a game called “1-2-3 Wooden Man,” something like Red Light, Green Light. One child stood facing a wall with their back to the rest, shouting, “One, two, three, wooden man!” and then quickly turning around. The rest of us had to freeze in place—like wooden statues—when they turned to look. If you were caught moving, you had to be out . The goal was to sneak close enough to touch the wall without getting caught. We’d giggle and tease, sometimes making silly faces to distract others and cause them to move. It was a game of patience, timing, and a bit of mischief, and we loved every second of it. 

But not every day was sunny. On rainy afternoons, we moved indoors, and our favorite indoor game was called “counting stones.” It was quiet, calm, but surprisingly exciting. Each of us would gather the same number of small pebbles—usually five. When it was your turn, you’d place all your stones on the back of your hand, flip your hand over, and let the stones fall to the floor. If the number of fallen stones matched the number another child had in their hand, you got to take theirs. It was a game of chance, and every little fall of the stones brought a thrill of anticipation. We played this for hours, competing to see who could end up with the most stones. 

And then there was one more game I loved—a game I often played alone but never felt lonely doing. I would take two or three pencils and turn them into puppets. I’d draw faces on them with pens, wrap bits of paper around them for clothes, and sometimes use rubber bands to make tiny hats. Then, I’d give them names, voices, and personalities. One pencil might be a brave hero; another might be a villain or a silly sidekick. I would make up stories—adventures, battles, even love stories—and act them out with my little pencil characters. It was like a tiny theater in my hands, where I was the writer, director, and performer all at once. Looking back, I suppose that was my first experience of storytelling. 

These childhood games taught me more than I realized at the time. We learned to take turns, to follow rules, to be fair, and to be creative. We used what we had around us—stones, pencils, empty spaces, we didn’t need fancy toys or screens to have fun. Our imagination did all the work. 

My childhood didn’t have gadgets or video games, but it had the laughter of hide-and-seek, the frozen fun of “1-2-3 Wooden Man,” the quiet excitement of counting stones, and the magic of pencil puppet shows.  

Even now, when I think back, I can still hear the echoes of laughter, the shouts of “Found you!”, the stillness as we froze like statues, and the soft clatter of stones hitting the floor. Those sounds are etched into my memory like music from a time long gone, but never forgotten.