'Dodge rock' as you call it we'd play all the time it seems, though there was an accepted rule that stones were not allowed, only clods of earth. Few lasting injuries resulted. I remember though the disgust when an older boy from a 'gang from another road' took to throwing bricks (and the noise as they hit our flimsy barricades). Clothes peg guns were followed by ballpoint pen blow-pipes (you'd tie a few strands of wool to a pin with cotton them blow the dart through an evacuated ball-point pen). And then there was the truly amazing throwing arrows. An arrow was made from a straight stick, with a nail at the tip and cardboard fins. A piece of string knotted at the end to hold it was wrapped around the rear, the other end held at the tip of the arrow. Then you threw, holding the string as you loosed the arrow. I believe a 'throwing stick' is/was used by the Hottentots to amplify their arm action when throwing spears. Anyway, the upshot was that the arrow could fly straight and true for about 100 yards, before embedding itself wherever it landed. Thankfully we never used these as weapons.

All of which sounds as though it could have a place in the Anarchist's Cookbook, but there were more gentle passtimes. Did anyone else levitate their school friends (with the chant "She looks pale/is pale/looks ill/is ill/looks dead/is dead")? Or do that trick where you knot an imaginary string round their spine and pull it from behind, so that they jerk even though they can't see you? It seems such paranormal activities, which once seemed commonplace though kept from adult eyes, are given up when you reach puberty.

en"misspent youth"ile

Oh, and matchbox tanks (rubber band powered).