But there it was.
I shall explain.
A few weeks ago, during one of my photo shoots, I noticed something on the sidewalk.
I walked over to get a better view.
Well, what do you know.
That’s a hopscotch grid.
And whoever chalked it into the sidewalk went all out – they used different colored chalks for the numbers. That’s competition-level hopscotch, if you ask me.
It’s kinda funny. You don’t normally see a hopscotch grid these days. And if you did, it was usually chalked into someone’s driveway, not along the sidewalk itself.
For all you Generation Z members who are currently scratching their heads over what appears to you as a confusing arrangement of squares and numbers … let me explain hopscotch to you.
You stood at the front of the hopscotch grid. You tossed a small object – a coin or a stone – onto the [1] square. You now hopped OVER that square, with both feet landing in the [2] and [3] squares. Then one foot in the [4] square, and so on and so forth. You turned around, you hopped back, and you picked up the stone at the [1] square. Then you repeated the journey – only tossing the stone onto the next sequential square.
Oh, and you had to hop or jump into each square. And you couldn’t have any part of your shoe touch outside the square. And you couldn’t have your shoe land in the square with the stone. There were variations on these rules, but essentially that’s the general concept.
This is nice.
I’m almost wondering, if I walk around the neighborhood, that I might see a four-square grid chalked into the sidewalk. Or heck – maybe a shooting circle for a marbles competition.
Okay, it’s official. I’m old. Deal with it. 😀
Chuck The Writer 
that’s when us kids were outside having fun.
I remember hide and seek.
I’m old too! I graduated from high school 51 years ago this month!!
LikeLike
I took a walk, in my old neighborhood, last week and saw a chalked hopscotch grid that went all the way to 30. Very ambitious. We used to ask the man, at the local shoe repair shop, for a shoe heel to use instead of a stone.
LikeLike
The good old days…
Our grid was two large boxes, each containing a corner-to-corner X, resulting in 8 triangles.
Chalk was whatever could be pilfered from schoolrooms, or unearthed pieces of discarded plaster from over the fence at end of our street. Last resort: borrow one of Dad’s screwdrivers and scratch all lines and numbers into the sidewalk.
Stones only, of course the flatter the better. And the best were the treasured thick pieces of roofing slate that could be found between the houses.
LikeLike