Your Challenge Today: recall a time when you felt unadulterated joy as a kid

I'm not usually the nostalgic type, but I was challenged last night by friends to recall a time when I felt unadulterated joy as a kid.  Those times for me would definitely include adventures in tree-climbing, rope and tire swinging, swimming, bike riding and exploring the woods on the farm where we lived for a short while when I was 9 and 10 years old.  Those were activities I might do alone or with a gang of friends.  Then I got to thinking of the games we played when two or more of us kids got together.  Many, of course, included a ball: dodge ball, touch football, baseball, kickball, etc.  Other outdoor games were hopscotch, marbles, double-dutch jump rope and red rover.  When I was in 5th grade, without fail during every morning recess, we played Chinese jump rope.

Where I grew up in central and south Louisiana we had loads of rainy days.  We often amused ourselves with classic indoor games such as hide & seek, blind man's bluff, musical chairs, hand-clapping ditties ("Cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss a fella…"), pick-up sticks, card games (go fish, old maid, battle, concentration), the dot game and tic-tac-toe.  As you can tell, those were the dinosaur days before everyone had a home computer or even Atari!

I also loved playing board games (and still do!). Remember these?
Candy Land
Chutes & Ladders
Clue
Trouble
Battleship
Scrabble (still my all-time favorite!)
Monopoly
Life
The Dating Game
Chess
Checkers
Twister (does this one qualify as a board game?)
Boggle
Trivial Pursuit (okay, I admit it – we probably had Atari when this came out)
Pictionary (uh, this one too…)

A time of unadulterated joy.  That was before life started to get to serious.  It was before I had to brace myself against life's "diappointments" and hardships.  As you can see, my recollection of a time when I felt unadulterated joy had me walking down a memory lane filled with playing, and especially playing with other kids.  What about you?  How would you answer my friends’ challenge?