Category Archives: Game

7, 11, doubles

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 3/20/2017
Primary Language: English

7, 11, doubles

 

Informant: TF was born and raised in Villa Park, California. His father works in commercial real estate and his mother working as a manager for Choc Hospital. He has one older brother, a twin sister, and one younger brother. TR is half Lebanese and strongly connected to his Lebanese background. He is a first year student at USC. He learned this game from a friend at high school.

 

What do you do when you go out to parties?

 

“I like to dance and play drinking games with my friends”

 

Drinking games?

 

“Yes, like for an example 7, 11, doubles”

 

What’s that?

 

“It’s a drinking game. You need a cup, two dices and alcohol of choice. You role dice and if you get 7, 11, or doubles (like two 2) you choose a person to drink from the cup in the middle. If you get 7, 11, or doubles again before the person drinks everything from the cup that person has to drink again.”

 

Does this game mean anything to you?

 

“I mean it’s a fun game to play when you go out to a party, that’s all.”

 

Later on the informant said that he plays the same game. It’s interesting how popular this game is among teenagers. A drinking game that makes drinking more fun.

Hand Games (La vibora de la mar)

Nationality: Mexico
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (University of Southern California)
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 26, 2017
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

When I was little, there was a… like, a hand game, I guess, I used to play with my… my cousins and my friends… uh, back in Mexico, in Morelia. Uh, and it was one of those where you, like… you know… (pantomimes clapping her hands and slapping the hands of a person sitting in front of her) Um… but the words to this one, like, the song that went with it… uh, it was to the tune of “La víbora de la mar,” which is a song that, like, people dance to at a lot of… traditional Mexican weddings… uh, but for this game, the words changed to:

“A la víbora, víbora de la mar, de la mar

Los cuadernos a volar

Las maestras a la calle

Y los niños a jugar

Una vieja gorda

De la dirección

Siempre nos acusa

Con el director

Señor director

Su perro me mordió

Lo voy a echar al horno

Con sal y limón

El que se mueva se lo comerá

Yo mejor me quedo así”

(Translation:

“To the serpent, serpent, of the sea, of the sea

The notebooks go flying

The teachers go to the streets

And the children go to play

An old, fat woman

From the administration

Always reports us to the principal

Mister principal

Your dog bit me

I’m going to throw him in the oven with salt and lime

Whoever moves will eat him

I’d better stay like this”)

Uh, and then you’d have to, like, freeze, and whoever moved first lost. Uh… yeah, and that was just one of the hand games I played a lot when… when I was younger.

 

Thoughts:

This song/game contains many tropes common to children’s rhymes/games: overpowering the teachers and getting out of school, getting the chance to play instead, and cruel school administrators that hurt the children, but who will receive their punishment (by having their dog killed and cooked). There are also a lot of children’s games that involve staying completely still, and the person who moves first losing and receiving some sort of punishment.

Improv Theatre Games

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Minnesota
Performance Date: April 4, 2017
Primary Language: English

Game #1: The Question Game

When I was in a theatre class my freshman year in high school, our teacher had us play a lot of improv games that she taught us… uh… There was the question game, where everyone had to stand in two lines, and then the person at the front of each line… like, one person would ask the other person a question, and that person had to respond with another question, and, like, it had to make sense in the context, it couldn’t include, like, a statement answer, and it couldn’t be a repetition of the other question… that one was hard. And then if you couldn’t come up with a question, you’d lose and go to the back of the line, and then the person behind you would, like, challenge, I guess, the person you were going against.

 

Game #2: Freeze Tag

My favorite one was called freeze tag, and I still like playing it with people… theatre people, ’cause regular people don’t get it… but, yeah, this one we played a lot, and it’s where there’s two people, like, onstage or whatever, and they start improving a scene. And then at some point, someone from the audience will yell, “Freeze!” and the actors have to freeze in whatever position they’re in. And then that person from the audience will, like, tag one of them out, and get into the same position they were in, and they have to start a new scene starting from that position. And it just gets really funny, people do really weird stuff, and, like, our class got so many inside jokes from that game… yeah, it’s just really fun.

 

Background (from interviewer):

My informant is a very theatrical person– she enjoys playing games, making up scenes (one could say “playing make-believe”), and she has been very involved in her high school’s theatre department. We met during this theatre class, and the teacher who taught it had a very large impact on our lives. My informant has previously told me that this teacher was the one who got her into theatre and showed her she could become an actress someday, something she now aspires to be. These games and the general fun this teacher brought to our class are part of what made it so memorable and so enjoyable, and what created such close bonds between the two of us and between us and our teacher. My informant’s continued interest in and performance of these games shows the degree to which this class, this teacher, and the love of theatre that they inspired has shaped her life.

The Sentence Game

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire)
Residence: Minnesota, Wisconsin
Performance Date: April 2, 2017
Primary Language: English

So the sentence game, what it was is, we’d all get sheets of paper and write down a sentence, any sentence we wanted. And then, you would just pass the paper on to the next person. And then what would happen next is someone would read that sentence and have to draw a picture of what that sentence was, draw an image for it. And then once they had the picture that they drew, they would fold the piece of paper over so it covered the sentence, so the next person, the only thing they could see was the picture. And then pass the paper to the next person, and the person would look at the image and then write a sentence for it, and so once they had the sentence they would fold over the image, and the next person would draw an image for that sentence, and so on, and so on, until you feel like you’ve done enough.

 

Context:

I learned about the sentence game one of my first few Page meetings that I attended. Which, The Page was this awesome writing group, which was super cool, at my high school. For me, I wasn’t… I was an English nerd, but not really part of a group, and this was a fun way to get involved. It was like telephone but with words and funny images and weird sentences, and your sentence always developed into something that was completely the opposite from what it began with… and it was funny to see how it evolved over time… with different images and different sentences… and seeing different interpretations of the last person’s sentence and the last person’s image. And the more switches you did, the more it’d be kind of, like, funny. And I did it with my friends and then it got me even more involved ’cause then I wanted to come up with more writing games, and… that’s kind of one of the things that I did more with that organization, is I was constantly wanting to do different games and different ways to get people involved with the subject, because I loved making the subject fun… when I could, and using words like that.

 

Background (from interviewer):

My informant is a good friend from high school, and a fellow “English nerd.” She is a talented writer, and is now an English Education major at her university. When she first joined The Page, she was a very comedic writer, before veering into more serious themes. By our senior year, she and I jointly ran The Page and other writing clubs at our school.

The sentence game was originally meant as a writing exercise, or prompt, to get us thinking of ideas to write later on in Page meetings. Later, it turned into our default activity when the teachers who normally ran the club were too busy and the students were left to our own devices.

Soccer Game Rituals

Nationality: Mexico
Age: 15
Occupation: Student
Residence: Minnesota
Performance Date: April 14, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, Chinese

So in my soccer team, uh, like, before games, we always put our left socks on before our right socks, right? And then, we always, like, put on our left cleats and then our right cleats, but then we tie our right cleats before our left cleats. Oh, and then I always tuck in my shirt.

 

Background:

I guess it’s lucky, kind of. We do it every game, so I can’t really tell if it’s lucky or not. It’s just, like, a ritual that we started and we can’t change it, because then, like, it might turn unlucky or something.

 

Thoughts:

This team-wide pre-game ritual probably helps to build a bond or sense of community within the team, and allows the players to identify with and trust in each other.