Spiderweb Game

Background: Kayla Saikaly is a 21-year-old student living in Los Angeles, CA. She is a student at UCSD. She was born and raised in Southern California.

Original script: “So there was a game that I used to play all the time when I was kid. So, I was kind of a bully in elementary school. No, seriously. I would always boss all the boys around and I was like the ringleader of the girls, because back then it was always boys versus girls. So, I invented this game – or I thought I did, honestly I probably read or watched it somewhere and forgot about it – called the Spider web game. In the playground, we had this huge spider web playground structure that we called the jail. We would put all the boys in there through physical force – kicking, scratching, punching, slapping was all fair game. They would try to get out and we would give them 10 seconds to run and then we would chase after them to put them back in the cage. There was no real ‘victory’ honestly it was just a bunch of kids fighting each other… but playfully!! I swear, I didn’t make anybody cry or anything. But I did punch a bunch of guys and I kicked a guy in the balls for the first and hopefully only time of my life ”

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: My informant went to an elementary school in Cerritos, CA. It was a magnet school. She said she looks back on elementary school fondly and even though she was a bully, everybody did respect her and she keeps in contact with some of her friends back then

Thoughts about the piece: This game honestly sounds so violent to me, but I’m sure that as kids, it isn’t bad at all. I look back at elementary school and am in constant awe of how much energy I had, so I can see how this game would be entertaining to children – running, kicking, screaming.