Tuesday, December 1, 2009

I Get That Horse!

As a kid, every Sunday we'd all pile into the car and travel out to a family friend's dairy farm in a little town called Lynden, Washington.  Dad and Mom in the front, little brother and I in the back seat, little sister in the way back....of our 1958 Volkswagen Beetle.

My brother and I used to play a game called, "I Get That Horse."  The rules were simple, first one to spot the horse yelled out as loud as they could, "I Get That Horse!"  That's it.  They who yelled first got the horse until we spotted another one and on it went.

Sometimes we'd both spot the same horse at the same time and yell in unison.  This always brought on a heated debate, if not more.  You could be sure that if it was a white horse (Silver) or a yellow horse (Trigger), things would escalate quickly to pushing and shoving, which led to pinching and kicking, which since kicking is hard in the backseat of a VW led to punches. 

This is when a hand would materialize from between the front bucket seats and start slapping whatever it could reach - usually both of us.  This would quiet us for about 5 minutes and then we were back at it until the hand would again materialize.  I'm sure the forty-five minute drive seemed like hours to our poor parents.

We traveled this way for many years, fighting over which one of us Got That Horse. 

Poor little sister didn't stand a chance competing against the two of us in this game.  So she invented her own game.

In-between our yelling and arguing, kicking, pinching and slugging, a tiny voice would pipe out from the way back, "I Get That Cow!"

3 comments:

  1. Ha! That's very cute. Your poor little sister way in the back of the bug. Oh my, I can't imagine traveling with kids in those close quarters.

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  2. Just to cute! Leave it to the one left out to be creative. I have three boys, and there was always one left out of something!

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