Category Archives: Game

Pabitin at Birthday Parties

“A pabitin is a grid of bamboo wrapped in cellophane.  We have those at birthday parties and what you do is you essentially buy a bunch of small toys like those packs of sushi erasers or something.  Small dollar action figurines or crayons or candy… you tie or tape all of it onto the grid so it’s all hanging off.  Then you tie a large string to the grid and put it up basically like a piñata with one person handling the end of the rope.  You gather all of the kids under the pabitin and the person holding the rope can decide how far down he’ll let the grid fall to the children, and they have to jump up to try to grab the goodies.  Half of the fun is setting up how the toys and gifts are scattered and preparing the children.  I also like watching the children’s creativity get teased as they jump for the toys.  Bamboo is used for everything, like building houses… I don’t really know how we ended up making our native products out of bamboo, heheh.  So the material in itself already has cultural roots.   If in Mexican parties you always have a pinata, it’s the same idea for us Filipinos, where our children’s parties are characterized by pabitin.”

Background: The informant is a 20-year old college student who has witnessed several Filipino birthday parties in the past.  She has only been a witness, however, as she uses a wheelchair for transportation.

Context: This piece was told to me during a luncheon after our Sunday services.

This tradition puts a more competitive and high-energy spin on the normal act of providing gift bags to party guests.  The kids have fun as the adults tease them out of getting the goodies from the grid, and there are often bigger prizes than others that the children are already eyeing before they get to compete.  The grids can also be made of bamboo, which is light and flexible, and also one of our cultural agricultural products.

Patintero

“Well… yung patintero, it’s a street game.  Compared to other games, parang unique siya, diba? Usually, sa streets talaga ‘yun ginagawa.  Typically the kids go out into the streets after the time called the siesta… that’s really how it was for us back then, kung pinalaki ka sa Pilipinas.  Pag uwi nila sa school, kakain sila, mag na-nap tapos maglalaro sila.  Talagang maingay sa kalsada tuwing afternoon.  

(Well, patintero, it’s a street game.  Compared to other games, it’s unique, right? It’s usually played in the streets.  Typically the kids go out into the streets after the time called the siesta… That’s really how it was for us back then, if you were raised in the Philippines.  When they get home from school, they’ll eat, take a nap, then play.  It truly is noisy in the streets in the afternoon.)

It’s not a seasonal game, they always play no matter the time of year.  You can say it’s a team game, because all of the children are like… in layers.  Gumagamit sila ng chalk sa street, and they assign who’s playing and those kids need to be able to go through the other layers of kids who are trying to tag them.  Your teammate has to try to confuse the other team so that you both can get through.  Nag tutulongan kayo na makarating yung grupo mo to the end of the barrier.  (You help each other so that your group can make it to the end of the barrier.)  Whoever gets tagged… becomes part of the layers of kids trying to tag everyone else.

I like the team aspect of it…  These kinds of games are best for entire communities where everyone lives close together in rural areas.  In places that are urbanized, the kids don’t really come out to play anymore.  Games like these are ways to make friends.  Kahit hindi kayo magkakilala, nagkakaroon kayo ng mga opportunity para maglaro… (Even though you don’t all know each other, you get an opportunity to play together).”

Background: The informant is describing a Filipino street game called “patintero,” where children form layers of kids who are “it” and the others try to bypass their barriers and avoid getting tagged together.  She used to play this game growing up, and it is one of the most popular traditional Filipino games.

Context: This piece was told to me in person, at the dinner table.  The game is only something I have heard of other kids such as the informant, playing.  I was raised in an urbanized part of the Philippines, so I never really got the chance to participate.

Many of my cousins grew up playing these games in their neighborhoods where all of the community’s families lived close together.  The nostalgia the informant had for the game is interesting, as they described the game as being more for communities that are rural and more collective-based.  Such communities in the Philippines are called baranggays, and the informant grew up in one such community.  These neighborhoods tend to have families living in very close quarters without much disposable income, which would seem like an undesirable way to live.  However, the informant’s view on it was that it promoted an easy way for the town’s children to get to know each other in an authentic space, differentiating from the isolated nature in which children (like me) in urbanized areas tend to be isolated from their peers beyond school.  The informant often describes life in a baranggay as simple and often difficult, but the small pockets of togetherness is what characterized their childhood.

For a film that centers around patintero, check this link!

Patintero: Ang Alamat ni Meng Patalo is a film that focuses on the protagonist’s desire to get better at the game.

Bloody Mary

Context: The popular legend was spun off into an outdoors urban legend and corresponding children’s game in New York.

A.F.: For us, it [Bloody Mary] was like a, we had two ways. It was a sleepover game. We had a flashlight at someone’s house, but the main way that we would do it, so I went to elementary school in a relatively, even though it’s suburban, it’s still an isolated area, so there were like paths, that went to like houses or roads. So there was this path that led from like our, because we had like a vaguely biggish field, that went from the path to a house on my road. Which again, we thought it was like the Bloody Mary path, and if you wandered too far then Bloody Mary would come and get you.
P.Z. : Okay, so it was outdoors?
A.F.: Um, yeah, ours was actually outdoors. Yes.

Thoughts: This was a much different version than the one I am familiar with. I’m not sure if this was primarily an East-Coast variation or specific to the respondent’s school. But usually, there were not these specific, wooded, secluded paths that made this version possible.

Cheese Touch

Context: The Cheese Touch game was popularized shortly after the publishing of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and corresponding movies. The Bone Touch was one group’s variation of this popular game, instead altered to fit a rural ranch setting, replacing the forbidden cheese with a cow hide being displayed as decor.

A.F. : Okay. The Cheese Touch is, so, um, typically if someone touched cheese in elementary school they would have the Cheese Touch and the only way to get rid of it is to pass it on to someone else.
P.Z. : Yeah, I know that we played that at my elementary school, but we had also, because we were in rural San Diego, we went to a ranch and there was a cow hide, and it still had a bone attached to it, so that started the Bone Touch, but yeah, the Cheese Touch.
A.F. : Yeah
P.Z. : That was really popular, what, late two-thousands? Early two-thousands?
A.F. : Late two-thousands, early twenty-tens.

Thoughts: I had read the books that this game was based on, so the game made perfect sense to me when it began gaining popularity. This seemed to be extremely popular for a number of years, and seemed just a variation on the ‘cooties’ game that children often also play.

Swedish Garden Game – Kubb

Text/Context

Interviewer – Tell me about Kubb.
LN – Um, kubb is a Scandinavian game that you generally would play outside on a small field of grass, with, in my experience, friends, at some sort of, like, spring or family get-together when the weather is nice.
Interviewer – Ok, um, how do you set it up, and what are the pieces that you have?
LN – So the players split into two teams, each team has five blocks, which are about a foot tall, and the blocks represent their army. Their army gets lined up on opposite ends of the field, so one army against the other. And in the middle of the playing field there’s a taller block, representing the king, which the players are trying to knock down or kill.
Interviewer – Do you, how do you kill the king, and do you try to kill the king first, or do you kill the armies, or does it matter what order?
LN – Um, so the starting team gets a set of six sticks, which are used to knock down first the blocks of the other team’s army, before they can knock down the king pin.
Interviewer – What happens if you knock down the king pin first?
LN – If a team knocks down the king pin before knocking down all of the other team’s blocks then the team that knocks down the king loses.
Interviewer – Okay. And do you just, or what happens if you run out of sticks and you haven’t knocked down all of the army?
LN – Then the sticks are transferred to the other team, and the second team has to collect the blocks, their blocks that had fallen. Those blocks get thrown on the field between the king and the opposing army.
Interviewer – And what happens then with those?
LN – Those blocks are then stood up and the second team needs to knock down those blocks before they can hit— before they can knock down the opposing team’s blocks.
Interviewer – Okay, So they have to hit, so then the second team has to hit the extra blocks, and then the regular army, and then the king.
LN – Correct.
Interviewer – So they end up just building up more and more things that they have to hit.
LN – Right
Interviewer – And then, if they don’t hit all of the blocks then…
LN – Then it’s just the other team’s turn.
Interviewer – And they, um, do they have to hit the whole army of five all over again? On the other side’s team. Or do they continue with whatever was left of the last round?
LN – They continue with the remaining blocks, so they only have to knock down the ones that they didn’t— that they missed before.
Interviewer – So then, you said, they knock down the armies, and then you go for the king? And that’s game over, you win?
LN – Yes.
Interviewer – Is it something you play once and put it away or do you play multiple times in a row when you take it out? Like is it a long or short game?
LN – The rounds are short so you can play a whole bunch of rounds.
Interviewer – Do you really like this game? Has this stuck in your head since you first learned it?
LN – Ya, it’s a lot of fun. I learned it when I was about thirteen, so 11 years ago. And, um, I learned how to play it when I was—when my family was visiting friends in Sweden, with our family friends at a picnic during the summertime. Um, so, when we came back home, we were actually able to find a set of kubb blocks, and so we have a set at our house that we play with, with friends in the summer.
Interviewer – So is this something that people usually buy, or is it traditionally handmade, do you know?
LN – Um, I would think handmade. They’re just pretty crude, like, blocks. They’re like, what, 3×3 inches by 8-12 inches or whatever? Something like that. And the king pin only has a few extra lines to set it apart.
Interviewer – Is this game usually played by kids? You said you learned it when you were 13, so that’s pretty young. Is it usually just a kids game?
LN – Um… no? I would say it’s a game played by everyone. But it’s—it has simple rules so kids can learn from a pretty young age.
Interviewer – Cool.
LN – It’s not all that complicated, but I don’t have a ton of background knowledge on it.
Interviewer – But your impression is its a really old game that’s been played for a long time? By… Scandinavians…?
LN – Ya. It’s a classic game and it seems to be widespread in Sweden, if not Scandinavia.

Analysis

The game reminds me of other yard games like corn hole, or throwing horse shoes. They are all seasonal because they are played outside and rely on decent weather, and involve tossing objects with as much accuracy as a person can muster. Kubb seems to have more of a history or a narrative attached to it, because there is a king piece and army pieces, and you have to “kill” the other team’s army. I’ve never heard of corn hole or horse shoes having a narrative. The informant has taught other people—mainly their friends—how to play it, even though their friends have never been to Sweden. Kubb does not seem to be very widespread where the informant lives (USA East Coast), because they have never met anyone else outside of their family who was familiar with the game. It’s a competitive game, but also pretty chill, so it is fun to play while having a conversation with friends on both sides of the field, just enjoying a nice day.