Mom and Grandma came running from the kitchen. Mom screamed, “Kolya! Don’t!” and stretched out her arm to catch the hissing impact of the belt. Grandma also kvetched loudly, and they took Dad out of the room.
Crestfallen, with shallow whimpers, I rubbed the welts left by the belt looking away from the younger who huddled, in petrified silence, against the back of the big sofa…
~ ~ ~
In the Courtyard, we played Classlets.
First, you need a chalk to draw a big rectangular in the concrete walk and split it into five pairs of squares, like, a two-column table of 5 rows. Then get the bitka—a can from used shoe polish filled with sand whose enclosed mass conveys your bitka the required gravity, turns it a kinda tiny discus.
Now, standing out the bottom line of the first column, you throw your bitka into one of 10 classlet-squares and then go after it hopping on one leg (up the first column and down the second, 1 leap per square) to pick it up and proceed thru the rest of the table, also in one-legged hops, to leave the table of classlets by the final bound from the bottom classlet in the second column. A parabola-shaped mission trip is over.
(While going thru the table, take care your sandal never lands near any of the chalked lines or else the other players, closely watching your progress, would raise a hell of jeering shouts insisting that you stomped on it.)
Now, safely out of the Classlets table, you have the right to throw your bitka targeting the next square in the parabola and repeat your hopping trip to carry it out. After your bitka visited, in turn, all of the classlets, you mark one of them as your “house” and further on in the game you may feel in it at home—put your other foot down and relax. Yet, if your bitka missed the proper square or landed on a line, or if you touched a line when hopping, another player starts their tries and you become a watcher…
There were ball games as well. For instance, hitting a ball non-stop against the ground, you had to accompany each strike with a separate word, “I! – know! – five! – girls’! – names!” At each subsequent hit at the ball, you called out one of 5 random names, no repetitions allowed. Then followed 5 boy’s names, 5 flowers, 5 animals, etc., etc., until the ball bounced out of reach or the player got lost in their enumerations…
Another ball game was not as intellectual. You just hit the ball against the faded-pinkish-washed plaster on the house wall (closer to the corner, safely away from the window on the first floor). Guessing the landing spot of the re-bounced ball, you jumped over it with your legs wide apart before it hit the ground.