Last week, in Fundamental Understanding of Mathematics LXX I announced a summer vacation, of sorts, for the series, and gave regulars a couple of Fermi problems to chew on.
We are still enjoying that summer vacation, and this is an extended version of last week's mathematical musings, as you might guess from the title numbering
Meanwhile...
When I was very young, and the family would be out for a shopping trip, or a walk from point a to point b, I would fall behind. My parents, not wanting to lose me for some reason, would each grab a hand, and one of them would count their steps. One, two, three...
On three, they would lift me up and swing me forward, so I was no longer tail end Charlie, but in three more steps (not my steps, my mother's or my father's: they were the same height, and had similar step lengths) I'd be behind again, and they'd lift me again and swing me forward.
It was a lot of fun (for me, anyway, I didn't have to do the lifting, just the swinging) and it's the earliest thing I recall that involved counting.
We played another game to keep my sister and me from arguing with each other on car trips. My dad would pick out some landmark in the distance, an intersection, or a billboard, or a tree, and we would estimate how many telephone poles we would pass before we got to said landmark. Then we'd count the telephone poles as we passed them, and whoever was closest won. After basking in glory for a few seconds, or experiencing the humiliation of defeat, Dad would name another landmark and we'd be off on the next round.
Eventually, that game morphed into estimating distance, and we'd call our "One point three!" or "point seven" or whatever, and then we would carefully count tenths of a mile on the car's odometer to determine the winner.
Now, I may just have had a very weird family, but maybe not. Do you recall any similar games from your childhood?
Have fun in the comments.