Great Balls of Fire!!

Growing up in that small Cleveland suburb of Bay Village was, at times, quite boring. I owe the small amount of creativity and imagination that I have today to that little city on the shores of Lake Erie. We actually had to THINK of something to do on those summer days.

We could go into our garages, retrieve a couple of items and invent a game in minutes!

I recall one of my favorites! It only took a couple of tennis balls, a can of gasoline, a match and voila you had Great Balls of Fire!

The summer nights were often aglow in our neighborhood. We took the tennis balls, soaked them in gasoline and then of course, lit them on fire. We played a very "quick" game of catch so as not to burn our hands or set our clothes on fire. Every now and then we'd get out the tennis rackets and baseball bats and use them to bat the balls around. A game of Great Balls of Fire Baseball was fantastic! As I look back, it's a wonder we didn't set something on fire!

The next morning our yards were littered with circles of singed grass and bald, blackened, crusty tennis balls! A perfect reminder of the fun we had the night before.

It's a shame our kids today don't have the same sense of imagination and adventure. The other day I tried to get my kids and their friends to play a game of Great Balls of Fire with me and they looked at me as if I had lost my mind! They were actually concerned they might get burned!

It's all kind of sad to me.

Today the kids play on a screen, not in the front yard. They light fires with controllers, not matches. They don't imagine and invent. These days playing a game "together" means all your friends are playing the same game on a wireless gaming system at the same time while sitting in several different locations. What fun is that? How about a little face to face, rough and tumble?

We need to introduce the kids of today to the many treasures that are located in our basements, attics and garages. They need to know the many uses of jump ropes, buckets, fishing wire, gasoline, balls of all shapes and sizes, garbage bags, bicycles, large electrical wire spools, tools and tool boxes, hoses, sprinklers and road kill.

Oh....the many uses of road kill!

That's a whole different summer night!