Folded paper and rubber bands and a game of cowboys and indians

Perhaps influenced and inspired by the numerous Cowboy and Indian movies screened on TV which were popular in the 1960s, playing at Cowboys and Indians was something that I used to do in my pre-school years acting out the scenes of the movies I watched with some of the neighbours of my age in the wide lift landing and corridor as well as on the staircases of the block of flats I lived in. I actually had a Red Indian outfit, complete with a head dress of feathers, which my parents had bought for me from that wonderful toy department I loved going to in Robinson’s at Raffles Place, which I dressed up in from time to time.

Often, our Cowboy and Indian game would involve the use of rubber bands which would be used to fire projectiles made out of scrap paper, folded, rolled tightly and bent into a vee shape … the tighter we could roll the paper, the more painful the projectiles or paper bullets would be, to simulate guns and arrows. We would use these implements in games of “Police and Thief” as well as in playing out scenes from the previous evening’s Combat! as Vic Morrow’s character, Sergeant Saunders, or Rick Jason’s, Lieutenant Hanley, or sometimes as the Germans they fought, from behind the cover of cardboard boxes.

Rubber Bands and Paper Bullets

Although relatively innocuous, the paper bullets did actually inflict enough pain for us to scream out each time we were hit. Whatever it was, it was one of those things I thoroughly enjoyed playing with.