No trip to the 'burg is complete without a stroll or two down DoG Street, preferably one by day and one by night. This past trip, I had both. My midnight walk ended in an awkward moment and an emergency trip to Wawa with Julia, so it felt like undergrad all over again. Daytime was more successful. I had some time to wander alone: I enjoyed to beautiful weather and sat on colonial steps reading Jane Austen. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. Then, with company, I met a colonial person at an outdoor booth and learned how to play colonial games.
The first game I learned was "shut the box." It is a tavern dice-game that seemed well-suited to its purpose: it would be fun to play while sitting around drinking and chatting. I wished we'd had it the night before, when Julia, Ariel, and I had been out.
The next game was trap ball. This one was my favorite -- not so much because of the game, but because we made a spectacle. (I seemed to do that a lot this past weekend. In a variety of ways.) The game is like tee-ball without a tee. You launch a ball from a wooden trap into the air and try to hit it. If you are in the field, you try to catch the ball when it is hit, or throw it back at the trap. The game started out as one colonial person and three tourists, but we gained small children and adult people as the game progressed.
At one moment, I was enjoying watching a small, blond boy attempt to learn the game. Another tourist walked up to me and asked how old he was. With a start, I realized that she thought he was mine! Which, from appearances makes sense, but still surprised me. This last story is of "day-maker" length, but I'm not quite sure it counts as one.
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