Category Archives: Game

Down Down Baby Clapping Game

Nationality: Unstated
Age: 7
Occupation: 2nd grader
Residence: los angeles
Performance Date: 4/16/12
Primary Language: English

 

Down, down, baby
Down, down the roller coaster (accompanied by the hand making a horizontal wave motion)
Sweet, sweet, baby (accompanied by both arms crossing the chest)
Sweet, Sweet don’t let me go

Chimmy, chimmy cocoa pop
Chimmy, chimmy aw
Chimmy, chimmy cocoa pop
Chimmy, chimmy aw

I have a boyfriend
A sweet, sweet
He’s so cute
A biscuit

Apples and bananas
Peaches on the table
Step up baby
Don’t let me go

Samantha learned this from her older cousin Isabelle. Samantha said her reason for playing it was to have fun with her relatives. She plays it when they get together for holidays and birthdays mostly. I can guess this is meaningful because it’s a way for an older relative to bond and teach a younger one. Girls’ folklore is often more collaborative and less competitive than boys’ folklore and clapping games are an example of this. This version of the rhyme is interesting for the emphasis it puts on the boyfriend. This both excludes most boys from playing for fear of seeming feminine and stresses the importance of having a boyfriend to young girls. The version I learned had lyrics about grandma being sick in bed and let’s get the motion of the head, hands and feet. It’s always interesting how folklore changes over time and space especially a change from grandma being sick in bed to a boyfriend. A version of this song is in the movie Big

Water Wars

Nationality: American/Puerto Rican
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

A game played by the students at my informant’s high school. The rules are as follows:

$5.00 cost to enter the game, which is organized on Facebook. Everyone splits up into teams of two and attempts to spray the others with water guns. The game is played out over several weeks, with players trying to assassinate each other in the hopes of winning the pot made up of all the entrance fee money.

Players’ homes, cars, and the school parking lot are considered safe zones. Everything operates on the honor code, with players honestly communicating whether they’re “assassinated.”

Players have a tendency to get highly invested in the game’s outcome, leading to inventive and extreme scenarios. For example:

–A boy dressing up in a girl’s outfit to provide a decoy.

–Jumping off a roof to escape a 9:00 AM siege and get to school on time.

–Using a dry ice bomb to lure a player out of his home with an explosion in his front yard (leading to police involvement and a year’s ban on the game).

Not much lurking beneath the surface here, as the reasons for the game’s existence seem to be for fun and profit. Assassin games like this certainly aren’t uncommon, but this might be the most organized example I’ve heard of, and certainly the only one played for actual cash. Impressive, really.

The Five Questions Game

Nationality: American
Age: Nineteen
Occupation: Student
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English

The informant enjoys playing a question game he calls “The Five Question Game.” Two people play: One, who knows how the game works, asks the questions. The other, who has never played before, answers.

A wager is made at the outset to determine what the two participants are playing for.

The person answering has to get all five questions wrong in order to win. After he explained these parameters, he and I wagered one dollar and set to playing:

Informant: What’s your name?

Me: Jeffrey.

Informant: (pointing to someone else in the room) All right. Who’s he?

Me: Arturo. (it was not Arturo)

Informant: (pointing to a longboard) OK. What’s that thing?

Me: The moon.

Informant: Okay. Wait, what question are we on?

Me: …Seven. Probably seven.

Informant: Okay, so basically yeah, that’s the game?

Me: Is that the end of the game?

Informant: Yeah, well basically. You just ask a couple questions and then you like, throw a curve ball, and then like you ask them, like, how many questions is it at, and most of them are eager to like, get back to the game and win their money and then that’s how you get ’em. I mean it only works once, because if you’ve played before you see it coming. You haven’t played before, right?

Me: Oh no, I’ve played a million times.

Informant: Fuck you. So yeah, that’s the fifth question.

Me: Okay.

*conversation continues for about a minute*

Informant: So what was that for again?

Me: Oh, it’s uh, it’s for the, the CIA. I work for them now? Yeah.

Informant: DAMN IT.

This was a pretty fun one. Informant says he heard it as a thing you do to hit on women, i.e. at a bar you bet a woman a drink that she can’t win the game, then whether or not she loses you could still offer to buy her the drink. I’d say there are worse ways to break the ice. Makes sense that it would proliferate as a it makes the person performing it look clever.

 

The Spade

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tacoma, Washington
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

 The Spade

Folk item/tradition/game/initiation ceremony

My friend told me about a folk object/tradition from her school:

“The spade is close to 100 years old. It is literally a shovel, but is very old. The tradition is that every graduating Class has a color tie that they must wear at all times, and at the end of the school year, the graduating Seniors tie a ribbon of the same color on the spade. Usually people embroider their year, since only 4 colors are used. The spade is used in a tree planting ceremony, but the Hiding-of-the-Spade ritual.

The graduating Senior Class must hide the spade and leave clues for the rising Senior Class. These clues are presented by a representative of the graduated Senior Class on the first day of school (now alumnae). The Seniors have until October 31st to find the spade. if the Senior Class has not found the spade, then they must tie a black tie on the spade. There have only been two black ties, and there is a lot of superstition around it because a member of each of those Classes died. During the whole year, too, the Class must wear black ties instead of their normal colors.

If the Class finds the spade, they can apply to get Senior privileges, like off-campus lunch. If they do not find the spade by October 31st, at that point they can continue searching but the Junior Class is also allowed to search for the spade. If the Junior Class finds it first, they receive Senior privileges.”

 

 

My informant feels like it is an interesting way to make the rising Seniors prove themselves, show that they have earned their spot as Seniors, which is why there is a black tie if you don’t find it, that is not what you want – you want to show you are clever enough to step up to the challenges set up by those before you.

 

The spade connects students of the Senior Class to a legacy. Covered in ribbons, the “ties” of older Classes, it links the Senior Class to years worth of alumnae. This spade also functions as a concrete moment in an otherwise liminal time: rising Seniors and graduating Seniors change identities here. The graduating Seniors become alumnae once the tree is planted, joining their Class to all the past Classes and their trees planted on campus. The rising Seniors, upon securing their tie on the spade, become part of the legacy as well, but must first earn the privilege to do so by finding it.

“What’cha Doing?” “Eating Chocolate…”

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Student Housing
Performance Date: April 24th
Primary Language: English

Contextual Information

Time of Interview: April 24th, 11:56 a.m.

Location of Interview: Interior of EVK Dining Hall

Informant’s First Encounter w/ Folklore: Childhood (8 or 9 years old)

When Folklore is Performed: During recess, amongst fellow students.

 

Transcript:

Child A: A

Child B: B

 

A: “What’cha doing?”

B: “Eating chocolate.”

A: “Where’d you get it?”

B: “Doggie dropped it.”

A: “Where’d he drop it?”

B: “In the sewer.”

A: “What’s it taste like?”

B: “Cow Manure.”

 

This is a variant of a back-and-forth story that my informant remembers from his gradeschool (roughly around the 1st or 2nd grade). He told me this story with an emberassed yet gleeful expression, often chuckling in between verses. He apologized, explaining that the story brought back a lot of memories from “the playground.” He recalls reciting this with several of his friends, always reacting with the same “grossed out” expression after the final line was spoken. This sort of back and forth was part of the children’s dialect, almost like a code or a password into their society. If you could master it, you could match their wits. The piece also helped the children come to terms with the natural functions and materials of the body.