Fall is approaching fast. Besides the obvious signs (temp drop, decreasing daylight hours, leaves falling, on-set of seasonal depression, etc.), there was one other indication that I kept stepping on yesterday during my long run – conkers. Well, I call them conkers anyway. Their official name (I guess) is chestnuts, but conkers sounds much more natural to me.
Why do I call them “conkers.” Well, I guess it’s one of those bits in my life that distinguish the fact that I grew up in England and not the US. Unlike the other more obvious traits (disinterest in american football, baseball, etc.), this is a distinguisher that no-one would know unless I told you.
You see, a common game played by all English children is a game called “conkers.” I doubt that anyone reading this post will have heard of the game “conkers.” This makes me incredibly sad. 
As you can see from the picture, it’s a simple game played between two people. You thread a piece of string through the center of your “conker” and then take turns swinging at the other person’s conker (kinda like the game you used to play in school taking swings at each other’s pencil). Whoever breaks the other persons conker earns a point for their conker. So say you play 5 people (each with brand new conkers – called “none-ers”), then your conker would have 5 points (and become a “fiver-er”). If one of those conkers had already beat a few other none-er conkers (say for example 10 – it would be a “ten-er”), then your conker would get those points. So your conker would become a “fifteen-er” (4 points for the 4 new conkers you beat plus 11 for the ten-er conker you beat). Fun, huh?
There’s a whole bunch of little rules and tricks that bring memories flooding back for me. The main one that comes to mind is how to make your conker hard. (That could be taken the wrong way, but as a kid you don’t think like that). My brother and I would hide our conkers in the water heater room where the warm moist air would make a real winner! Would have to hide them from mum though, because she didn’t want old conkers in the house. Couldn’t understand why at that age!
Now here is a sad part – I just read that a survey done in 2000 revealed that many schools in England have banned kids from playing conkers due to potential injuries. One school actually outfitted kids with safety goggles. What is the world coming to!
I could go on with this post forever, but I’ll stop now. In closing, I’ll just say that although my muscles may disagree the day after about the worth of long runs, my mind disagrees. It’s been good to get outside, enjoy the views, think, reflect, and get healthy.
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beats today: 16,800
my beats to date: 286,900
