Category Archives: Game

Schoolyard Coin Trick

Text: “One trick I did consistently throughout my childhood, it was like the only magic trick that I ever knew how to do, it was learning how to pull a coin out of your mouth. So what you would do is you would put your arms behind your back, and pretend to put the coin behind your back and then you put like a finger in your mouth and then flick and a coin was supposed to come out. But, the trick of it, like how you actually do it is its not coming from your mouth, but it’s coming from your sleeve.”

Context: K is a twenty year old student who grew up in Virginia and currently attends USC. She learned how to do this trick from a friend on the playground when she switched schools.


Analysis: The more popular version of the above trick is to pull a coin out of someone’s ear, and it’s done through a similar trick of the eye or deception. Hiding the coin and moving it outside of the person witnessing the trick’s view. However, pulling a coin out of one’s mouth also has an allegorical relation. Recorded in the Bible In Matthew 17:24-27, the coin in the fish’s mouth is one of Jesus’ miracles. When the tax collector comes to Peter the apostle, Peter turns to Jesus and asks if he does not pay taxes. Jesus replies and explains why he does not, but instructs Paul to go fishing and tells him he will find a coin in the mouth of the first fish he catches to use for his taxes. In the 2008 United States census 76% of Virginians (K’s home state) identified as Christian, so perhaps there’s a relation between children hearing Biblical stories and trying to imitate them.

The Unlucky Loteria Tab

Informant: CS ; Interviewer’s best friend

“So when you play loteria, early on you start to pick your favorite tabla.”

Interviewer asks: “why do you think that is?”

“Oohh I’m not entirely sure. Like if I like had to take a guess, I think it’s because of um… repetition. Like you form a routine on one single playing card, so you begin to associate it with like good vibes.”

Interviewer asks: “can you elaborate?”

“Yeah so, there are certain like superstitions that go with playing loteria. The main one is that if you switch your playing card after losing, you’ll never win while you play that round. It’s only until you like, form a relationship with one of the 10 playing cards that you’ll win.”

Interviewer asks: “So what’s your lucky tab?”

“It’s 3.”

Interviewer asks: “Do you believe in that superstition?”

“I do! The saying we have in Spanish is ‘te salaste’. Loosely translated, it means ‘you salted yourself’. As in like, you cursed yourself for that round. Almost like you jinxed your own winning. It like gets serious when you’re like playing with older folk and they start betting on the game, like gambling almost. And like the unspoken rules are taken really seriously.”

interviewer asks: “do you think the unspoken rules are meant to be taken seriously?”

“I do. I think that when you switch your playing card to another, you’ll start pulling cards that match the one you switched out. Almost like the game is taunting you.”

my interpretation: This superstition runs deep. I remember the elders in my family yelling at me everything I even hinted at switching my playing card. They would often say that I would jinx myself. In hindsight, I think that the idea of having to stick with the same card could be a metaphor for monogamy. In theory, you build a relationship with this card and you start almost bonding and memorizing the playing card. If you “cheat” on the playing tab/card or toss that tab out, the cards that are pulled in the next round will almost always be matching your old playing tab. Almost as if the game reminds you of how good you could’ve had it if you stayed put.

A Christmas Pickle

Text:

Talking about Christmas traditions

L: Also, whoever– The way we decided who opens their presents first is that there’s one uhhhh ornament on the tree that is a pickle, and whoever finds it first gets to open the first present.

ME: I heard about this from my friend A!!

L: really?

ME: A was talking about a Christmas pickle

L: do you know where it’s from?

ME: no I have no idea

L: I don’t know where it’s from 

ME: her [A’s] guess was like: someone in America was like let’s make a Christmas pickle and try to sell it. That was her guess. 

L: yeah, no yeah, we have a Christmas pickle. It’s sparkly

ME: You have a Christmas pickle that’s uh an ornament 

L: I’ll show it to you

ME: tell me what– tell me about the Christmas pickle

L: ok so the Christmas pickle, that’s from my dad’s side of the family. Ummm. I don’t even know where it came from, I should really ask them. But like I just remember ever since I was a little kid ‘find the pickle.’ it would always be my grandparents who would hide it on the tree and then like we would all search for it. I usually was the one to find it first. I’m not kidding, like almost every year. I don’t know why, I’m usually not that observant, but umm yeah the Christmas pickle. Loved it. Umm yeah, don’t know where it came from. And we would always go from there, youngest to eldest for opening presents. One at a time, always. Like that stuck.

Context:

This tradition was shared with me by a friend after going grocery shopping together when we sat in my bedroom to do schoolwork together.

L is a Jewish-American USC student studying sociology who grew up in Colorado.

Analysis:

Christmas games and present-giving styles vary greatly from house to house. The Christmas pickle seems one such game/style. Before this year I was unfamiliar with the tradition.

L says she has no idea where the practice came from, but that she loves it. I offer that the tradition may have been started by a company with the intention of profiting off of selling Christmas pickles. This style of tradition creation is not unprecedented, especially in America.

Hand Slap Game

Text:

Two people face each other. Their hands are connected palms together with fingers together and thumbs upward. They extend their arms to connect their middle fingertips together lightly.  (see image below)

One person will try to take one of their hands away from the other and slap their partner’s hand. The partner with try to pull their hands away before they can be hit. 

(Though the informant assigned no such roles, I will refer to the partner aiming to slap as the offensive partner and the partner pulling back as the defending partner for ease of communication.)

If the defensive partner succeeds in avoiding the hit, both players will reset their hands to the starting position and the offensive partner will try again to hit the hand. This repeats until the offensive partner wins. If the offensive partner succeeds in hitting their partner’s hand they win, and the defensive partner loses. The original hand position is taken up again and this time the partner who lost will take on the offensive role (trying to slap their partner’s hand before they pull away.) and the partner who won will take up the defensive role (trying to pull away). Play proceeds like this for as long as is desired.

Context:

The informant learned this game at a young age from her father who is from Murcia, Spain.

Analysis:

This game reminds me of many other hand games primarily children will play. specifically, it reminded me of a very similar game I learned as a child. The game I know features the same goal of trying to slap the partner’s hands before they pull away, and also the same system for switching roles. The difference is the starting position. As I learned the game, the offensive partner would place their hands out palms up and the defender would lightly rest their hands over the partner’s hands palms down.

These hand games indicate resourcefulness among people and children especially. This game is a way to have fun without the need for any materials. it is also very quick to learn.

Game: Electric Shock

L is a junior at University of Southern California studying Communications. He is an international student from China who is telling us about a game he played as a child from his hometown in China, Anhui Province in the city Hefei. His first language was Chinese, so throughout the interview, he would sometimes slip into Chinese and struggle placing the exact words in English.

Text:
L: “It’s just another version of hide and seek in the place where I live. Like every hide and seek game. The one whose finding the others is gonna have to stay in place and counts for 30 seconds but that specific place is, in this game, a big pillar. He places his hand on the big pillar and counts for 30 seconds before he goes off and finds the others. I think that’s it.”
Why is it called Electric Shock?
L: “When we find another one, we say “Electric Shock” and he can’t move. He could move before, like if he tried to dodge he can move but he can’t be seen. But if he is seen, then ‘Electric Shock’ and he can’t move. He’s frozen in place.”
How do you win the game, to just not get found?
L: “Yeah, and by finding them all. And there is a time limit. Like for ten minutes. Like, you can’t be looking forever. So, ten minutes. If you can’t find everyone, then yeah.”

Context:
“For some reason, we don’t call Hide and Seek Hide and Seek. We call it Electric Shock in Chinese, like that’s just a traditional version native to the place, it’s name is called Electric Shock…very childish, like before sixth grade. I really have no idea how we came up [with it]. It’s something that we come up with, like our community. Like, there’s like 20-30 kids who live around our community. We come to same place every two days to play them. We play it so often. I have no idea why, but I guess it was very fun.”
This was a game specific to the community of the informant, a game shared among all the children of that area in the city they grew up in. The informant specified that they played this frequently during their early childhood, but stopped before sixth grade. They used it as a way to have fun with other children, and viewed as something childish: enjoyable as a kid to play, but socially unfitting for an adult.

Interpretation:
In every culture and nation, there seems to be a childhood game or two with which any child can play. There are commonalities between Electric Shock and American hide and seek and freeze tag. But to call Electric Shock a fusion of hide and seek and freeze tag would be ignorant of the Chinese community that created the environment that fostered this specific game. The time limit, the hand on the pillar, even the title, Electric Shock; these distinct variations compared to other examples of hide and seek or freeze tag make it unique. Even though it seems to be only played in one city of one province of one country in the world, Electric Shock has become a piece of children’s lore, its own folk game. However, its specificity to one region in the world does not take away from its purpose, synonymous to all other universal children’s lore. These small, folk games children invent give them a chance to let loose society’s expectations and have fun. There’s freedom that comes with playing the same game with dozens of other people your age, laughing and playing together. No matter the game style, title, or variation, the special nostalgia, fond fun and freedom that’s associated with childhood are hardly taken away. That makes childhood lore unifying under whatever variation, but simultaneously unique to each child’s upbringing.