I am proud to say that I had an amazing childhood in my hometown and my own dear country, Philippines.
I almost always heard from most of my fellow Filipinos that batang 90's or people who were born in 90's and earlier than that had the best childhood memories. But I bet to disagree.
I wasn't born in the 90's and earlier than that. I was born in the early 20's, 2001 to be exact, yet I experienced an amazing childhood.
Phones weren't that frequently used yet.
The Internet and social media were just a baby.
And physical socialization is the thing!
And COVID-19 didn't exist yet!
What a beautiful world to live in.
I played luto-lutuan using leaves.
Luto-lutuan is a kid game where you have a bunch of kitchenware toys and pretend to cook something. I played it when I was a kid with my childhood girl friends. We would get different kinds of leaves that were just around our neighbourhood and pretended to cook them off in our kitchenware toys.
Just to share something, my friendship with my childhood girl friends in our neighbourhood didn't last long. As far as I can remember, one day, they just decided to not be friends with me anymore. Until now, I don't know the reason and I'm not interested to know. I guess they are just full of drama or I unknowingly did something wrong.
Well, I noticed that when I was younger, when the other girls were a little mad at you, they would stop talking to you. Even when I went to elementary school, some girls were also like that. And even in high school, but a little less. I don’t understand. Why can’t they just say that they are mad or someone did wrong so it can be addressed, right? It’s full of drama, for me. Period. In my case, I grew up with five brothers and I am the only girl. When we fight with each other, it's more of a physical or verbal fight, and later on we're all okay again like nothing happened earlier. Not much drama. Sorry for the little rant. Hahaha.
I got addicted to playing with paper dolls.
Even before, everytime me and my youngest brother received a peso, we would go to the nearby store and buy something. As for me, I almost always buy paper dolls.
But when I was in Grade 2, I remembered that one day, we had homework about paper dolls. And so when I went home, I was so excited to do the homework and asked my eldest brother, who is so good at drawing, to draw me a paper doll. The following day, I felt so proud of my paper doll because it looks like an anime girl while others' kinda look more cartoon. Haha. Afterwards, my girl classmates and I continued to play it even if the homework for it was already over.
I had a phase in my Grade 2 days where all I cared about was my paper doll. To the point that our teacher called us out in the middle of the lesson and she got angry because we kept on playing with paper dolls. I was one of the tallest in our class at that time, so I was always given a seat at the back corner of the classroom, not paying much attention to the lesson because we were secretly playing most of the time. Hahaha. I was a bad student, huh?
To continue my paper doll addiction… After class, when I was at home, I just kept on drawing and creating new designs for my paper doll. Dresses, pants, tops, shorts, gowns, wedding gowns, name it! My paper doll has it all. I even said to my mother that I want to be a fashion designer someday. Guess I was really crazy for paper dolls back then.
Here's some drawings that I found. This was embarrassing though. My kuya (eldest brother) drew the wedding dress and the school uniform for me. No. He isn't gay. I was just really a persistent sister. Hahaha.
I skipped afternoon naps to play outside.
Our parents have a full-time job, so growing up, they couldn’t take care of us for a long period of time. They were home at night, on weekends, or on holidays. Back then, when it was summer time, we stayed in our house with our two maids that we call ates or big sisters. They kind of act like our parents when our parents weren't around. They told us to sleep in the afternoon and not play outside for a long period of time because it's our parents' order. But we, siblings, were sneaky. We didn't follow them most of the time.
There are many times that our ates locked our gate just so we wouldn't play outside. But again, we are the sneaky siblings. What my brothers did was to hammer the padlock using a rock, sometimes we got a hairpin. Those tactics worked. Rarely, our youngest brother jumped out of our window too. Then, after the successes of us sneaking out, we played and played outside until it got dark.
I played almost every traditional Filipino game.
Here is the list of the traditional Filipino games or mga larong pinoy that I played during my childhood. These are the games I can still recall, but I’m sure that I played other different games that weren’t listed here.
Bahay-Bahayan - I think I never played the role of being a mother in this game, because I really didn't want to anyway.
Bilog-Bilugan - ayan si palaka! Walang kaawa-awa.
Chinese garter - I admit. I wasn’t that good at playing this. Hanggang sa balikat lang ata kaya kong talunin, tapos magba-black magic na ako. Hahaha.
Doctor Kwak-Kwak - I still remember that I played this with my playmates at my grandma's neighbourhood every after my classes in elementary school until it got dark. This is one of the most enjoyable games for me.
Habul-habulan
Hand clapping games - Nanay Tatay, Leron Leron Sinta, etc.
Holen - We had a lot of this back then. Ngayon, meron pa din pero more on pang-display na lang at hindi para sa laro.
Jack 'n' Poy
Jack Stone
Luksong Baka/Luksong Tinik
Langit-Lupa - This is also one of my favorites.
Piko (hopscotch) - This is also a game that’s worth playing until night. There were times that the street of our neighbourhood was full of drawings for our piko.
Patintero
Pogs - My brothers had a lot of this back then noong uso pa.
Prisoner/Presohan - We played this almost everyday when we were in elementary school at the basketball court. Yung malalaking bato ang base namin. Good ol’ days.
Sipa - I wasn’t that good at playing this.
Taguan (hide and seek)
Tumbang lata
Ten-Twenty
Teks - My brothers had a LOT of this back then! Kaya kung makikipag-laro ako sa iba, wala akong pake kung matalo ako kasi marami pa kaming ganun. Hahaha.
Those are the 4 out of more amazing things that made my childhood very memorable.
Before I started writing this article, having a part 2 of this didn’t cross my mind. But now that I’m currently writing this, it does. I guess I enjoyed writing this so much that it gets too long already and if I added more reasons why I had the best childhood, it would really turn out to be so long.
So, if you enjoyed reading this, please look out for part 2 that I am going to post soon. 😉
How about you... what does your childhood look like?
Were you still friends with your childhood friends?
I would love to hear anything about your childhood.
If you've read this far, I truly appreciate it.
Thank you for reading! ❤️
Edited:
Read the part 2 here: I Had the Best Childhood in the Philippines (Part 2)
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Oh that's good! Haha. Those are the games that children should be playing these days. Unfortunately the pandemic happened. Oh well. It will take a few more years before everything will get back to normal. Hopefully.