The year was 1963… It is August. At approximately 8:30 a.m., a great rush took place out the doors of my neighborhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s midsummer and another day has begun. One by one we met, whether it was in front of my house (the only attached house with a 1/2 as part of the address) or another friend’s house. The group would number around eight, and we had to decide a critical issue on this hot morning: what game were we going to play?

You see, when we were growing up the world was our oyster with so many sports and games at our fingertips. There was stick ball, slap ball, punch ball, stoop ball or touch football. Then there were the games that were interspersed with the sports, like marbles, skelzies (an asphalt board game using bottle caps stuffed with melted crayons), tag, red light-green light, hide-and-seek, Simon Says, ring-a-levio, and Johnny-on-the Phony. Oh, what fun we had — so much to do with not enough time in the day to accomplish all this activity.