Kites, marbles, and boys at play
In this age of high-tech gadgets and electronic games, I will always remember and appreciate the traditional games that I played when I was a boy, like flying kites, rolling marbles, or spinning tops.
Kite-flying was the favorite pastime of my youth, not only during the summer months but also in the month of December. These are the months when the wind and the weather make it ideal for flying a kite. And as a young lad, I have made and flown different kinds of kites.
I began with the boca-boca, which I crafted out of plain bond paper or newspaper pages and flew with a spool of thin thread I would filch from my mother’s sewing kit. The boca-boca was the beginner’s kite and easy to assemble. And unlike the bigger kites, it could be flown effortlessly at the slightest hint of a wind and within any available ground space, or even from rooftops. To my young mind then, just keeping it up in the air for a few minutes was sheer joy.
From the lowly boca-boca I graduated to the medium-sized sapi-sapi or delta kite, with its colorful flaps, fins and tail. In those times I could buy a ready-to-fly sapi-sapi from the corner sari-sari store, but I usually made my own. I would first assemble my kite’s skeleton from thin bamboo strips made flexible with my Boy Scout’s knife. I would then dress it with multicolored papel de hapon using paste made from cornstarch or leftover sticky rice. For the finishing touch, I would attach the fins, flaps and a long tail to make sure my kite would be steady against the wind when it started climbing high into the sky.
As I grew up, I joined the big boys and started to fly a huge and more sophisticated saranggola, which I learned to make with the help of the neighborhood kite-maker. I remember how I watched in awe as my first saranggola soared until it became a mere speck in the vast blue sky. Sometimes I would make it dive and then climb up again at a flick of my fingers on its strong nylon string.
I remember, too, that other boys flew their saranggola in an aerial dogfight, each trying to cut down the other with strings that had been laced with tiny broken pieces of glass. As for me, I was content just gazing up at my colorful saranggola as it danced playfully in the sky aided by the wind beneath its wings. That always spelled happiness for me and made my day.
Marbles were my other passion in those days. My playmates and I would usually play marbles when kite-flying was off-season or when the wind was unsuitable. But unlike kite-flying, which I could do solo, I played marbles competitively with other boys.
I was most familiar with what we called a hole-in (or holen), which we usually played in pairs. We would first dig five small holes into the soft ground, about two inches in diameter, four to five feet apart, and arranged in an “L” or “S” shape. The goal called for each player to roll his designated marble or pamato into the holes successively from the first up to the fifth, and then from the fifth back to the fourth all the way to the first to complete the set of nine holes. Who should be the first to roll was decided by means of manuhan—each player rolling his pamato into a starting line drawn horizontally five feet from the first hole. The player who could land his pamato nearest to the line got to do the first roll.
To start a set, the first player would roll his pamato from the starting line into the first hole and continue on to the next and all the way to the last, for as long as his pamato holed-in. Should the player miss a hole, he would lose his turn and his pamato would stay where it stopped. A miss would also pave the way for an opponent to take his turn in rolling his own pamato into the holes.
The first to reach the ninth hole was the set’s winner, who would then collect the agreed-upon bet that the players had put into the pot at the start of the set. To start another set, the loser of the previous set would do the first roll.
The players would usually play a final set, literally “for all the marbles,” to end a match.
I played other games in my youth, such as, spinning a top on a designated circle on the ground, playing street patintero on moonlit nights, catching spiders and making them fight on a stick, collecting rubber bands or teks, and many more. But none of them has inspired me to soar high and reach for the sky more than kite-flying. And no other game has taught me how to play fair and remain competitive than playing hole-in with marbles.
Today, my only grandson Derek just wants to play video games and other high-tech toys with me. I try my best to play with him despite my limited skills and low interest in his kind of games. But I am also hoping that I will be able to fly a kite or roll marbles with him a few years from now.
When that time with my grandson comes, I will feel like a boy at play again and practicing what George Bernard Shaw once said: “We don’t stop playing because we are growing old; we are growing old because we stop playing.”
Danilo Gabriel Mendiola, 73, also has three granddaughters. He is retired from corporate work and now serves with his wife in the Marriage Prep Ministry of their parish in Quezon City.
