Squish the Melon

This is the closet photo I could get for Squish the Melon..see how happy they are too!

Oh the memories of a Catholic school girl sitting in a classroom with itchy wool jumpers, white pressed "school" shirt, navy crisscross Girl Scout  tie with a snap, and "school" shoes only to be worn at school, and summer shorts under our uniforms in case our skirts flew up.  Yes, folks, this is me on the early school bus.  Walking up the large cement stairs of the Catholic school, early 70s.  Let's start with those nuns who NEVER let us inside the school before the school bell rang.  Oh great joy if you were allowed to ring the large brass bell. We fahroze on early January mornings.  The nuns would watch us from inside the front school door to make sure there were no fights.  We were too cold to fight and had to look at our imaginative resources...each other and a game we invented.  It is called "Squish the Melon" invented from our last Catholic school we went to before that one too shut down.  We would come out of a warm school bus to the freezing friends who walked to school. 

Here's how you do it, we would begin instructing the others. You find a pillar of jutting out part of the brick school building.  You would cozy up inside the corner of this pillar and the wall.  Then the girls, no boys allowed on your part of the playground, would all rush up to you and squeeze their entire bodies into one continuous line, shoulder to shoulder, squished, face to face with each other, laughing and somewhat warm.  Teeth frozen in the cold, fake navy blue acrylic fur winter coats(wind would pass right through these polyester layers) , they were stylish with their droopy gold buttons, matching scarves and hats from Sears flying everywhere, laughing hysterically, we soon forgot how cold we were.  What's so exciting about this game?  First of all, we won.  The nuns wanted to make us miserable and instead, we laughed until we cried.  Second we were warm.  Third was blood flow, because, the last person had to be the "caboose" somewhat exposed, you had to push on the entire line and work your way to the corner where you were laughing the hardest and it was, by so many bodies, the warmest place, until someone wedged in and popped you out.  No special words or phrases were said, it was all personalities and play, with rules we invented. 

The game was lame but invented out of sheer necessity of the exposed Catholic girls in winter, when there were no "UGG" boots but rather these plastic molded slip on rubberized "Goodyear" type knee high boots with fake shearing lining.  They were all the craze, with their "molded" side buttons, and fake alligator texture and one inch molded heel, no name boots purchased on sale from Thom McAnn or Sears.  However, they were not very warm with worn school knee socks, and after a few games of tag, they soon had a hole in the bottom.  If water soaked through then you could put on "Wonder Bread" plastic bags on your feet to at least keep the water out. 

I miss "Squish the Melon" and often wonder was that game ever reinvented or is it only local to our school(s).   So funny, the nuns looking out of their lair, all the girls are miserable jumping up and down in the schoolyard sending in the weakest girl to knock on their door to let us come in early and all of a sudden the miserable girls are missing from the window view.  The nuns would venture out of their warm hallway and they would march over to our happy cluster but alas there was nothing in the guidebook that would "not allow" us to do it.  Besides  they would have to come out and yell at us in their ugly little ankle zip up old lady boots, we would laugh at those too.  Laugh at anything you could in Catholic school, it kept you warm, connected with the others, and saved your sanity.

Any other made up games that anyone has to add, please do. Catholic coping stories also welcome, there is more to come on this topic.  The games were not "dumb" but creative little saviors of the body and soul.