As the weather warms up, the school year winds down and the days get longer, we'll tend to see more kids out enjoying the summer, doing things that kids always do.

Granted, more and more munchkins are packing some type of electronic device these days, but luckily there is still room in a child's world for age-old games to wile away the hours until their curfew is at hand and they head home for the evening.

One of my favorites growing up was hide and seek. I really don't remember the first time I played it, because we played it so often when I was of kindergarten/first grade age that it literally is a blur.

But that doesn't really matter. In a way, the whole point of a game like hide and seek was to spend time with friends and get a little exercise.

During the summers growing up in a small town in Central Montana, my twin brother and I could always find a few friends to hang out with. We'd swim at the city pool for part of the day, maybe grab our fishing poles and head over to the creek, or decide one of our friends had a better idea.

Often in the early evenings, that better idea was hide and seek. There were times we could get 10-15 kids together and have a multi-block game.

Someone would always get designated as the "seeker" and the counting would commence. Kids scattered in every direction, trying to find a dark spot not too far from the "home" tree, light pole, street sign or vehicle.

Once the count had been reached (we usually went to 50, even though some seekers would fudge the time as much as they wanted to hopefully catch you off guard), the "ready or not, here I come!" statement was yelled with much vigor and, hopefully, fear.

The seeker usually took a good look around, ears perked to the slightest peep, and then proceeded to boldly move away from "home" to hopefully flush out his or her first victim.

Once the seeker saw someone, he/she tried to rush back to home and state, "1, 2, 3, on (hider's name)," before that person could run to home and say "safe!"

The first person "out" would usually end up being the seeker in the next game.

Eventually, every hider was either sneaky enough to get home safe or was found, and the next victim, er, seeker was set to count off while (hopefully) new hiding places were found.

I would try to find unconventional hiding places, but fairly often the seeker would only give you 10 seconds to hide instead of the usual 30 it would take to count to 50 at a normal pace. So in other words, I did a lot of seeking.

But I was a good seeker. I'd give everyone ample time to hide, but what I was really doing was trying to get people uncomfortable with their first hiding spot, have second thoughts and then as they were on the move ... wham! "50! Ready or not, here I come!"

I usually called out a couple of names on the spot, and I tended to wait out the rest. They'd usually get fidgety after a few minutes of you staying near home, and once someone made a run for it, they'd all try to get home safe in a shotgun barrage, hoping you'd miss their name in the melee.

But the hiding was the most fun. And if you were thin and fast, you had a great advantage. You could hide behind a light pole, under a car, maybe under a big evergreen, or actually climb a tree if you could do so without much noise.

One of my favorite moves was to be two feet away, directly behind the seeker when he/she reached the end of the count, and an educated guess would lead me to anticipate which way they would turn first. At that point I could just dodge their gaze and lean over and be safe. It worked well, if you were good at holding your breath and not moving for a short time.

Unfortunately for many of my friends, that wasn't the case. There was always someone snickering about something in the course of hiding, and that attracted attention, so the snickerers were usually banned from following the gifted hiders.

After a few rounds, an hour or two had surely passed, and mom would open the back door and blow the whistle, which was our curfew call, usually at 10 p.m. during the summer or a weekend.

The game didn't really ever end. Rather, it just picked up again the next evening, with a new "home" being designated, along with another range of potential hiding places.

And if those didn't pan out, I just had to hold my breath and anticipate.

Next time: Get your arms and legs ready for Anti-I-over.

You can attempt to reach Jerry Hitchcock at 664-8176, Ext. 2017, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at HitchTheWriter.