Hill Dill

This morning as I was cruising around Facebook, I noticed that my cousin had made a post for the Facebook group for our home town. He only posted two words: “Hill Dill!” There may have been some in that group who had no idea what that meant. But there are plenty of us who knew.

I don't know where Hill Dill originated – the name or the game itself – but it was a game we played on our school playground during recess, as well as sometimes before and after school. At the south end of the playground, bordering on the blacktop that ran through town, was a large grassy area. The two ends were slightly mounded up.

To play Hill Dill, there was one person in the middle of the grassy area who was “it”. Everyone else was gathered on the mound at one end of the field. “It” would call out “hill dill”, and everyone would race to the mound at the other end of the field. Everyone that “it” would tag during their dash across would then stay in the middle to tag people. And so it went, running from one end of the field to the other, until everyone had been tagged. Then we would do it all again.

Rare was the recess when there wasn't a Hill Dill game going on. It wasn't like we didn't have options. We had what I thought was one of the best playgrounds around. I can't begin to remember how many swing sets we had, but there were many. There were two slides, at least four teeter-totters, a monkey bar, and a large merry-go-round in the middle. There were trapeze swings on some of the swing sets, rings on at least one, and tetherball poles.

We had a lot of grass on the playground, but there was asphalt on part of it closer to the school building that gave us the opportunity to play outside even if the ground was muddy. I remember in fourth or fifth grade, there was a playground game talked about in one of our lessons – reading,maybe? I can't remember. But we decided to try it during recess and it became a staple for awhile. This one had two teams, two bases. One team was in the middle, and at a signal the members of the other team ran from one base to the other. The twist on this was that one member of the running team would be holding an object in their hand (usually a convenient pebble), and the tagging team tried to make sure they tagged the one holding the object. If they did, teams would switch positions.

All my life I've been klutzy. I'm one of those people who can walk across a flat surface and trip. I constantly have bruises on my arms because when I go through a doorway, I bump into one side. And when I was a kid, I constantly had bandaids on my knees, elbows, etc. Poor Mrs. Buzard, who was my class' teacher for three straight years, occasionally commented on how many bandaids she used on me!

But the worst was one day when we were playing that game I just talked about. We played that game on the asphalt, close to the school building. We were all running, either tagging or being tagged. And we were running pretty hard. One of my classmates cut in front of me too quickly for me to stop. And so I hit that asphalt at full speed. And slid. And, as I've commented on many times before, we had a dresses-only rule in school, so there was no protection on my legs. Somewhere during my slide, a third classmate who didn't have time to swerve ran into me. She hit my side with her foot hard enough to leave quite a bruise, causing her to go airborne and land a few feet away on her left hip.

Needless to say, that was the end of that game. I think the other casualty and I ended up in the office for those injuries. I had a bandaid on at least one elbow (if not both), one on my left knee. My right leg, though – the one I skidded on – ended up being bandaged from knee to ankle. I believe a note went home with me telling Mom if she didn't have gauze and tape at home that they would rebandage my leg at school the next day. That classmate and I spent about a week doing everything together, her left arm and my right arm linked together so no one would bump our injuries. I was glad when I could play again, and I'm sure it wasn't long until the next bandaid!