Childhood Games ~ Hide and Seek

Here we are continuing our nostalgic look back at the games we used to play as wee little children. This article is about the extremely popular game known as hide-and-seek or hide-and-go-seek. The extra word made no difference to the game by the way.

Everyone who is anyone has played hide-and-seek, it’s virtually a staple of childhood; like watching cartoons, rolling in the mud and dreaming of being allowed to go to McDonalds on your own. You can even play hide-and-seek with imaginary friends, though I can pretty much guarantee that that’s one game you won’t ever fucking win. Have you ever tried finding the hiding place of someone who doesn’t even exist? It’s a bitch I tell you.

You need quite a large area with lots of stuff around to have a really good game, playing hide-and-seek in an empty meadow is just a bit silly.

So what is hide-and-seek? Well obviously it’s a game in which you hide and someone else seeks, duh! Just as a random thought, it’s also a great way of training up future special forces soldiers.

What happens is this; a place is selected to be home or base, or whatever you want to call it, someone is chosen to be “The Seeker”, usually the least popular or youngest kid there, the chosen one is then instructed to close their eyes and count to a pre-determined number. The count starts and everyone scatters, trying to find the perfect place of concealment. If the chosen play area has enough, houses, gardens, walls or trees, then the possibilities of finding a decent hiding place are nearly endless.

Once the seeker has concluded his count he’ll then start to hunt, using formerly unknown tracking abilities and thinking outside the box (under that car looks promising). Once he discovers one of the hiders, he then has to race his prey back to home/base/big fucking tree. Whoever is back first has to touch base and utter the phrase “Ollie, Ollie, oxen free” in a loud voice, the hand must be on base when they it. If the seeker is back first then the one he found becomes seeker for the next game.

Hiding from a seeker in a typical game of hide and seek.

However if he doesn't catch anyone the poor little bastard to do it all over again next round!

While he has ensured, probably, that the next time around he’ll be among the hiders, there are still others to be found. Not much of a fun game if you only have to catch one person is it? As in most games, the winner is the last to be caught, or last to get to base and declare themselves safe.

With the exception of choosing a dangerous hiding place, hide-and-seek is one of the safer childhood games, the emphasis of the game is on being really quiet and also really fast, rather than being able to pancake whoever you’re trying to catch.