Category Archives: Game

Picture Telephone

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ridgecrest, CA
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English
Language: German

Picture telephone is a variation of the classic game telephone usually played with 5-10 players. All of the players are given a pen or pencil and a stack of post its stapled together with 1 page fore each player. Players sit in a circle and in secret everyone writes down a word or phrase on the first sheet of the stack. After 30 seconds, everyone passes their book to the right. At which point players must try and draw the word or phrase from the first page. Then after 30 seconds, they must pass the book to the right. The third player then must try and guess what the phrase that describes the drawing without looking at the original phrase, and writes it on the third page. Play continues until each book has made it all around the circle, with each player alternating drawing what is described or describing what was drawn on the previous page without looking at any other pages. By the time each book has made it all the way around the message has usually been greatly distorted, and all the books are shared.

 

This game was introduced to my informant at a high school get together. The game is somewhat complicated to explain, but easy to play, making it a game that is good to play repeatedly with friends, and strengthening bonds within the group. It also serves to exclude people who are not normally part of the group as they have to have the rules explained to them, often a couple of times before they understand how to play. This game is similar to telephone as one of the best aspects of game is comparing the resulting message with the original to see how the chain of communication distorted it.

 

“Iced”

Nationality: Indian
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

In order to “ice” someone, you have to hide a Smirnoff Ice somewhere that they would find it, and then once they do they have to chug it right then and there. Then they’ve been iced. It is said to be used to get back at someone.

“skunk in the graveyard”

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Arlington Heights, Illinois
Performance Date: January 18, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: french

“Skunk in the graveyard” is a running game you would play with friends outside, and it is like the daytime version of “ghost in the graveyard.” Essentially, one person is the “skunk” and they go and hide while everyone else counts at the “base” and closes their eyes. When it’s time to go seek out the skunk, everyone goes out from the base and once the skunk is spotted, the spotter yells, “skunk in the graveyard!” and that signals everyone to run back to the base before the skunk can tag you. If tagged, you become another skunk and thus another round begins. The rounds continue until there’s but one person left untagged, and that remaining person then becomes the one skunk to start the next game.

to “truck” someone

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: U.S. Army
Residence: St. Johnsburry, Vermont
Performance Date: February 2, 2012
Primary Language: English

There’s an old trick/game my cousin warned me of whenever you fall alseep around other people, and it goes like this: if someone falls asleep, you should grab a pillow and flashlight and approach the sleeping person. Slowly begin to wave the flashlight (turned on) back and forth in front of their eyes quietly shouting, “Truck!”…and growing louder with each word, “Truck! Truuuuck! Get out of the way!!” and then, bam! You smack them with the pillow in the face. And so the story goes, that if the act of hitting the person with a pillow didn’t wake them, then you should ask them in the morning if they dreamed about a truck running them over.

Jinx – a children’s game

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/25/12
Primary Language: English

My source is a current college student who experienced the game “Jinx” growing up and in elementary school. Jinx is a children’s folk game played when two individuals say the same word at the same time. Whoever says “jinx” first is then given rights to silence the other until they say they are unjinxed. A jinxed person can either wait or beg the other to allow them to talk or they can secretly take a belonging of the other and hide it. Once that person realizes what they’re missing, the jinxed person can use it as blackmail to get unjinxed and can finally talk again.

Jinx is a typical children’s game of teasing and playing with another person. It teaches children how to learn how to take a joke and to play with one another in good fun. The game is taught from one to another by seeing it, or by being jinxed and realizing the consequences. Like other typical children’s folklore, jinxing is an imitation of more adult ideas. In the game of Jinx, the notions of authority over another person and blackmail are taught, though of course to a miniscule scale, much like how the game of cooties and rejection is also laden with adult themes.