Memories of Congklak

After sending comment to Wati, this topic brings back my childhood memories..game called Congklak.I believe every kids in Indonesia who was born between 1820's - 1970's familiar with this game. :D

In late 70's, I first played this game with my sister,we were so into it, back from school while mom already in front of our bedroom,and start shouting "a a a...go get change, wash you're hand and foot,finish your lunch and do your homework first"...with mumbling,we both rushing to followed her order. After pass the checkpoint, she let us play.

So let the game begin....most of the time I lose from my big sister. It didn't take me long until I found out, that she was cheated on me. She's hiding 'shell' between her fingers, when she's about to shoot nothing.(nembak).Damn she's good.Of course I was angry at her, but then it didn't stop me from following her trick while I played with kids neighbor...:p

The first congklak we had, was made out of wood, just like picture above excluding the 'duck head' on it,very simple. Second one was made out of plastic, red colour, with this Congklak the story begin. As this game can be addictive as well, sometimes we played until late night, coz neither of us want to hold a 'Loser' title and you can imagine how noisy it was... until one day, back from school, we found our 'beloved' plastic congklak was on top of stove and completely disfigured, from all 16 holes became 4 and 1/2 and short from approx 1 meter long shrunk to 30cm, .....what's going on here?? we all puzzled, go figured.

It was my Dad who did it!(Mom confessed), We cried 'like someone died' (ok maybe not that so drama)for almost 5 minutes (or longer, hey..we were kids ok!)...stop,then we begged mom to buy a new one, offering her in return our long list of promises, 'promise we play only when we finished our homework', 'promise we make our room more tidy', any kind of promise you name, we mentioned all.... then she replied:"Ask your Dad when he comes home" with sorry face...and crying continued (this time as I can recall was longer :p).

Urghhh... I've had hate him for what he did. Apparently he can't take with all the noise 'pletak-pletok-pletak-pletok' it makes while we played, he got crazy by it.When he came back from work that day, none of us talked nor smiled to him ...hahahaha.

Ohhh there goes our Congklak ...end up in trash bin.