Category Archives: Game

Car Game

Main Piece:

Informant: This is my car game that I play every time I drive and also just every day I do this every single day it’s become a way of life for me. And basically, the game is for every Kia Soul that you see it’s one point for every vintage Subaru that you see it’s one point so like things like the ones that have like the split color siding, you know, the old logo, et cetera. Um, and then if you see a Subaru Baja, which is the truck Subaru made from 2000 to 2006. And they discontinued it because it was so unpopular. It’s worth 10 points. And it is minus one point for a cop car minus two points for concrete with their lights on because it’s annoying and ablest and, yeah, and then the other versions that we’ve had that we’ve played is like for every like, quote, liberal, gay, whatever. Sticker it’s plus one and like for every like Trumpy sticker it’s minus one it just really depends on oh yeah, it really depends on where you are though because I feel like it’s a little biased played in Texas because it’s really unfair because you’re in the negatives and that’s no fun. Um, but it only Yeah, so and then my whole thing is like the more points I have, the better of the day I’ll have so it’s an emotional thing and it fucking holds up to I swear. 

Relationship to the Piece: 

This is a game my informant came up with and has taught to all of their friends, which they now play. It has spread around their cohort, taking on a life of it’s own.

Context: 

The informant is one of my friends, a 19-year-old theatre major at the University of Southern California who grew up in Texas. I was told this as we were hanging out in one of the theaters on campus as we were talking about folklore. 

Analysis:

I think it’s interesting how the point system involves what the car is decorated with as well, because the predictors of good or bad days start to make a little more sense. For my informant who grew up in a conservative part of Texas, the bumper stickers were a reminder of the people they lived around who weren’t very accepting, but at the end of the day, it’s about the cars and the points. These indicators might seem silly, but they are a way of external reassurance of your emotional state, I’ve started playing it and I’ve noticed that I almost force myself to have a better day if I’m in the positive, which I feel like has actually helped my mental health because I end up in the positives more often than not. 

Slide (Game)

Text:

“Your hands would slide (Interweave your hands with your friend’s hands and then slide them out and then draw them both towards yourself) and you’d then start doing patty cake [clap your own hands together than then hit your partner’s right hand with your right hand, and then clap your own hands again and repeat with the left hands]. You would start counting each time you and your partner hit hands and skip the number five while counting – 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 etc. and then when you got to 50 you would skip from 49 to 60. If someone said 5 (including 15, 25, 35, etc.) then they were ‘out’.”

Context:

EK is a 19 year old American student at USC. She described a child’s game she remembers playing with her friends while growing up. She was raised in Northern California. 

Interpretation: 

Growing up in Minnesota, we played all sorts of clapping games, but I’d never heard this one. It’s interesting that the “patty cake” hand clapping motion was presented as a given, and while I understood it, I assume other people wouldn’t know what “patty cake” meant, however it might be a more widespread game than “Slide” is. It seems as though this game is a derivation of “patty cake”.  Since it is a bit more complicated than “patty cake”, it would probably be seen as a more ‘mature’ way for older kids to play “patty cake”. Emily Rivas (2020) talks about the “patty cake” hand clapping game and describes it as “the most classic and simple clapping game out there.” Perhaps its simplicity is what has caused it to be generalized to so many other games. If you read the rest of her article “10 classic hand clapping games to teach your kids”, she even describes the hand motions of one of the rhymes/games “Miss Mary Mack” as a derivative of the “patty cake” hand clapping. Even more interesting is there is a game called “Slide” in this article that looks significantly different than the “Slide” described above in both lyrics and hand motions. Nevertheless, “patty cake” has a long history and some debatable origins as a nursery rhyme (Di Donato, 2016), but its proliferation in new derivations of the game is incredibly intriguing. Hand clapping games are great for kids and also very common (in variable forms) in my experience because they can be played anywhere and are easy to learn, while also being competitive, which makes them fun. They are something that gets passed around by kids without anyone really knowing where they came from, and since the informant told me about a game I had never heard of (and I supplied her with games she had never heard of), it is obvious that they their usage varies even across the United States.

Annotations/References:

Di Donato, Jill. “The History of ‘Patty Cake’ Is More Interesting than You’d Think.” Romper, BDG Media, 9 May 2016, www.romper.com/p/the-history-of-patty-cake-is-more-interesting-than-youd-think-10222. 

Rivas, Emily. “10 Classic Hand-Clapping Games to Teach Your Kid.” Today’s Parent, St. Joseph Communications, 8 Sept. 2020, www.todaysparent.com/family/10-classic-hand-clapping-games-to-teach-your-kid/. 

Miss Mary Mack (“bad version”)

Text:

Performed with handclapping: 

“Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack 

All dressed in black black black 

With the silver buttons buttons buttons 

All down her back back back 

She couldn’t read read read 

She couldn’t write write write 

But she could smoke smoke smoke 

Her father’s pipe pipe pipe.”

Context:

KY is an 18-year-old American Student at USC. She grew up in North Carolina. I asked her if she knew any proverbs or commonly said phrases and she told me this one. She told me this song/rhyme that was played with handclapping when I asked her about any childhood games she remembers, but she told me she could only remember the “bad version,” which she thinks was “bad” because of the discussion of smoking/pipes.

Interpretation:

Miss Mary Mack is rather widespread, and while I’ve heard the beginning before, it wasn’t common where I grew up, so I didn’t know the whole thing. I would be considered a passive bearer of this tradition, whereas my informant would be an active bearer. It’s common that children’s songs like this will have the “good [original] version” and the “bad version” derived from the original with a few things changed to make it naughty. The naughty oikotype might be specific to the area my informant grew up in, and there may be different oikotypes in other places that are similar but have slight variations. And since this can be played as a game with handclapping, it is a way for kids to entertain themselves without a need for toys or things of that sort and it is easy to learn with a simple melody and repeating words. 

Four Square (Game)

Text:

“There are four squares [on the ground] and everyone stood in an individual square and one square was the “King” – the person who had done the best so far or got there first in the beginning. You are hitting a ball in a square [from one person to the other], calling different names out of moves or “tricks”. One move was “around the world”, where if the ball hits in your square you have to spin before hitting it out. You moved up in ranks if you did well, and if you didn’t hit it, lost the ball, if you hit it out of your square, or it double bounced [bounced twice] in your square you would be out. One move was called the “penny drop” where you hit the ball really lightly so it would double bounce in someone’s square, and they would be out.”

Context:

MM is a 24-year-old American Missionary from a town in the middle of California. I asked her about any games she remembers playing while growing up and what the rules were for the game. 

Interpretation:

Four Square is a game I played growing up during recess as well, but for me, it looked a bit different than the way my informant described it. While the basic rules remained the same, we had a distinct oikotype of the game that didn’t involve the tricks that my informant mentioned. When I mentioned some of the rules of the way I played it growing up, my informant hadn’t heard of those either. It’s interesting to me that I could’ve gone to any group of children where I am from and the rules would’ve been the same, but now if I tried to play it with people from a different state, we probably wouldn’t be able to agree on how it would be played to the point where a game with a basic concept has completely different rules in different places. Games like these can develop subcultures where children really take them seriously and competitively and they turn into more of a sport than a game. It showcases the inherent competitiveness of kids and their way to make creative fun of their own. 

Sharks and Minnows (Game)

Text:

“Sharks and Minnows – there would be a shark and they would tag people (the minnows) who were running across a defined space and the sharks could touch anyone anywhere that wasn’t in the ‘safe zone’ at the beginning and end of the defined space. Once the shark touches a minnow then they become another shark and the game goes in that manner with people running back and forth across the defined space until everyone has been tagged except one final minnow who becomes the shark in the next round. ‘Run minnows Run’ is the chant that goes along with it.”

Context:

OA is a 21-year-old American student at USC. She grew up in Washington. I asked her about any games she remembers playing while growing up and she told me about “Sharks and Minnows”. 

Interpretation:

This game is similar to one I played growing up called “Ships Across the Ocean”. The rules are pretty much the same, but the chant is different, and the name is different. I assume because of how similar the rules are that this is an example of monogenesis (one origin) and diffusion, instead of polygenesis (multiple origins). It’s likely that this game developed somewhere and spread across the country (and perhaps to other countries as well), but the name got changed as different people played it. It isn’t uncommon for kids to change the rules of games to fit their likings or to fit a certain context the game is being played in. Kids are creative and play games to spend time with each other, and they can get incredibly competitive. A game like this is fun because you had to be fast, but you also had to be agile and play smart when trying to evade the sharks, so it made it so that boys and girls alike could excel in it and different people were winning each time.