GAMES PEOPLE PLAY:

The old man asked his little grandson, one fine & sunny day,

Why he sat inside & didn’t ever go out in the sunshine to play,

“I´ve never even seen you dirty with a scratched & scabby knee,

I´ve never seen you kicking a ball with your shirt escaping free,

I´ve never seen a scuffed shoe & roses escape your pale cheek,

The wind never plays with your hair, in an hour, a day nor week.”

The little lad looked at his grandpa with very confused expression,

Thinking the old man was mad or suffering from ageing depression,

“Of course I play Grandpa & also have a lot of things that I like to do,

I have my computer, I-Pad, I-Pod & my play station´s also brand new,

I down-load games, kill the baddies & a thousand points I´ve scored,”

It was now the old man´s face that looked confused & utterly bored.

“Grandpa, when you were my age, long ago, what was it you played?

If there weren’t any computers & no screens with anything displayed,

No mobile phones, no chatting & texting & no points in X-box games,

Weren’t you fed up & bored with your dull life always being the same?

You must have been very sad & I am so very glad I wasn’t in your place,”

 Grandpa just looked at the boy with a frown upon his old lived-in face.

“Oh sonny we played alright, how we played, all through the long day,

Ring-o-roses, catch, cowboys & Indians & as cops chasing robbers away,

Hide-n seek, football, skipping the rope & splashing puddles in the rain,

Conkers, scabby knees, ludo, marbles, puzzles, dinky-cars & model trains,

From grey dawn to rosy dusk we played & we did all our homework too,

And we also helped our Mummy & Daddy, to do the chores we had to do.”

We skimmed knees & stones on the river & fished with just a simple line,

The days moved so slowly & in our world we were the owners of our time,

We got dirty & snotty; we laughed loud & fought hard with all our friends,

On those grey rainy days, it was Lego, meccano, I-spy & then let´s pretend,

We helped Mum in the steamy kitchen when she baked her yummy cakes,

She´d let us lick the sticky bowls, then we´d go off & play ladders & snakes.

The little boy sat listening & looked deep into the eyes of his old Granddad,

He thought that the old man had lost his mind & had gone completely mad,

“Grandpa, I have no idea at all what you are talking about, absolutely none,

I only asked what you played as a boy & what you used to do for your fun,

And all you do is babble away, about all those things that don’t make sense,

The old man just scratched his head in dismay, feeling sadly & deeply incensed.