Category Archives: Game

Jump Rope Rhyme

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2008
Primary Language: English

Child’s jump rope rhyme

(Girls name) is having a baby

(Boys name) is going crazy

They went to the doctor and the doctor said

Boy, girl, twins or an alien

Claire played this game when she was a bit older, around thirteen, and she remembers she began hearing this jump rope song right after they had just had their first sex-ed class. A group would gather together and someone would be jumping in the middle of two other people and they would chant this song. You would keep jumping until you no longer could jump anymore and whatever you landed on, boy, girl, twins, or an alien, was what everyone would predict you would have as a child. Now Claire knows its obviously a silly game, but at the time if someone landed on alien or they wanted a girl instead of a boy, she said that people would get really upset about it, especially if you landed on alien because you would be taunted all the rest of recess for it.

Claire believes that her and her friends were so embarrassed by this jump rope game because it was children joking about something that is kind of serious. The topic of having a child at that age is something that is slowly becoming a possibility, Claire described, and to sing a song about it made people nervous but adventurous at the same time. She described it as children dabbling with concepts they don’t understand but are trying to grasp the concept of.

I completely agree with Claire that this rhyme would be appealing because of the material being sung about in the song.  I believe that there are a lot of childhood rhymes that address subjects that may be more adult in subject but seem child like so it helps kid to talk about them without being uncomfortable. Through folklore such as children’s rhymes, topics can be addressed and taught to children but in a playful manner so that children can learn about topics such as babies, sex, and other adult topics without being uncomfortable. Thus this children’s rhyme demonstrates that and as Claire said, it helped them talk about a topic but jokingly.

Jump Rope Rhyme – United States

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: South San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: April 5, 2008
Primary Language: English

Cinderella,

Dressed in yella (“yellow”)

Went downstairs to kiss her fella,

Made a mistake,

Kissed a snake,

How many doctors did it take?

1, 2, 3, 4, etc…

Berna first heard this rhyme as a young girl on the playground at school.  She had become so familiar with the jump rope rhyme, that she recalls that she must have first heard the rhyme as a girl in her younger elementary years, probably around 2nd or even 1st grade.  Berna jumped to the beat of this chant while attending South San Francisco Elementary School sometime in the early 1990’s, in the Bay Area of California.  This rhyme occurs as such that the first six lines are chanted at the start of the jumproping.  The counting will then continue for as long as the jumproper can jump without messing up the rhythm of his/her jumping.

What I find interesting is that I, as a young girl, skipped and hopped to the same exact rhyme and used the same version, as a young elementary school girl in the early 1990’s, here in Southern California.  It is a marvel to see that such uniformity can be found in two such distinct areas as Northern and Southern California.  Though in the same state, these two geographical areas tend to appear as such different worlds: with different values, different lingo, and a different take on the “California lifestyle.”

To Berna, such a rhyme as this Cinderella one appeal to little girls because of its catchy nature.  The easy flow of the rhyme is extremely easy to memorize because it catches on so quickly.  In addition to that, I feel like the fact that the rhyme mentions Cinderella—a young girl’s role model; my personal heroine as a child—appeals to young girls worldwide.  To incorporate such a classic figure in literature and folkloric fairytales as Cinderella is sure to timelessly and universally grasp the attention of any audience.

Annotation: An original variation of this rhyme can be found in

Jump-Rope Rhymes

Natalie Park and Helen Park

California Folklore Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Oct. 1942) p. 377

Published by: Western States Folklore Society

Game – USA

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Oak Park, CA
Performance Date: April 3, 2008
Primary Language: English

Game—USA

“Beer Hockey”

Adam Schall learned how to play this game as a freshman here at USC.  While the rules of the game are not set in stone, they [as reported by him] are as follows:  Players (while 2 are needed to play—3 or more is ideal) all sit around a table (round or oval shape is preferred but not necessary) with a bottle or glass of beer.  It is important that there be a plentiful stash of quarters in someone’s possession or near the table.  To start the game, one player spins a quarter to the center of the table and calls out another players name.  The player whose name was called must try to whack the quarter (however he desires) at one of the other player’s bottles.  Each player may try to block the quarter with his/her index and pinky fingers only.  In the event the quarter makes contact with the bottle (the sound is usually loud and recognizable and thus the game can be played in a loud environment—hence why bottles are used), the individual who got hit enters a “drinking round.”  During this round, the player must drink his beer for as log as all the other players can keep a quarter spinning.  In the event that someone tries and succeeds in stopping the quarter upright, the player in the “drinking round” must finish his entire beer.  However if someone tries to stop the quarter upright and ends up killing the spin, then that individual must chug his beer.  The players usually get very into the game, setting each other up to make different people drink and reacting emotionally when someone’s bottle gets hit.

This game fits the criteria of one of those “useless drinking games” that college students play and use to get drunk.  While neither Adam nor myself had heard of the game before coming to USC, we had both been exposed to our own fair shares of drinking games, some similar, some different.  Drinking games are an interesting example of folklore because kids are always arguing over specified rules, which change from place to place depending on the types of kids, how heavily they drink, and how they learned to play the game.  Speaking as someone who came across the country to go to college, drinking games in New York and L.A. may have the same name, but almost always, the rules are vastly different.  Those who play the games feel very passionate about the rules that they were taught and thus different regulations can be a heated topic of discussion.

Folk Games – Sri Lanka

Nationality: Sri Lankan
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Sinhala

Folk Games – Sri Lanka

On Sinhala and Tamil New Year it is common to play folk games. My favorite is pillow fighting. The two contestants sit on an elevated horizontal pole, with one hand behind their back and a pillow in the other.  They then pound each other until one of them drops to the floor. This is a game enjoyed by children as young as 10 years of age but is usually reserved for young adults. My friends and I often compete against each other although I have never emerged the victor.  A great sense of balance is required, and the angle of attack is crucial, pure power rarely triumphs. A mattress is usually placed under the pole so as not to injure falling contestants.

Another folk game is the bun eating contest. Contestants kneel down with their hands behind their backs. The first to eat the bun that’s hanging in front of them is declared the winner. This is a game reserved for youngsters. Many variations of this game are present, sometimes donuts are used or even pieces of bread. Often contestants participate just to ease their hunger.

Climbing the grease pole is arguable the most challenging folk game at the festival. Contestants are expected to climb up a heavily greased pole to reach an object at the top, usually a flag or ball. The pole could be as tall as 15 feet. Great dexterity and speed is required for this and usually latter contestants win due to the grease being rubbed off by previous contestants.

Another common game is blindfolding contestants, spinning them, and seeing if they can use a stick or pole with which to hit hanging clay pots full of milk. This could be compared to the tradition of breaking piñatas. Victors usually get drenched in milk.

All these folk games are learnt at a young age and are usually experienced firsthand. There is no concern about them being forgotten as they are celebrated every New Year. However, I encourage people to participate in them; it helps make the festivities more enjoyable and casual.

Game

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Alameda, CA
Performance Date: March 3, 2008
Primary Language: English

“Circle, circle, dot, dot, now I have the cootie shot.”

I was sick and I touched Nick’s arm. I apologized for touching him while ill, and he pretended to be alarmed. He then playfully recited the above live. He said this above line as a way of jokingly warding off disease.

He learned this game from elementary school. In elementary school, girls think boys have cooties, and boys think girls have cooties. Cooties can be loosely defined as germs. The only thing one really needs to know about them is that one does not want to have them; they are gross and bad. The only way to ward off contracting the cooties was to trace a circle twice around a spot on one’s arm and then poke the center of the circle twice while chanting this line. The cootie shot also works to protect one from anything gross. Nick used it just like everyone else did in his elementary school. However, Nick still continues to use it in a playful manner. Whenever he encounters or touches something gross, such as a person coughing, he uses it. He calls these “occasions for the cootie shot.” He does not mean to offend the other person (me), he is just kidding. He realizes it is a “child teasing game.”

I myself also went through the cootie shot phase in elementary school. I think the cootie shot is pretty popular in most elementary schools, as evidenced by the cootie shot appearing in published works such as Shelley Stoehr’s book Weird on the Outside (p. 83). Playing tag became problematic when the cootie shot was introduced, because then everyone was busy inoculating themselves with the cootie shot after getting tagged. I agree with Nick that one mainly used it in elementary school as a way to get rid of any cooties one may have contracted from touching a person of the opposite sex, or something gross (or both). I agree that the cootie shot is a definite form of protection. In elementary school, it was thought to be a foolproof way to guard against cooties. However, I think there is another reason behind children wanting to guard against the cooties they could contract from interacting with a person of the opposite sex. Games are oftentimes a child’s way of exploring the world around them. They see that in the adult world, males and females interact and so children become curious about the opposite sex. However, in elementary school, boys and girls are usually polarized in their respective genders; girls stick with girls, boys stick with boys. According to elementary school social rules, boys and girls are not “supposed to” interact. I think the cootie shot is a “safe”, acceptable way for children to interact with one another. The cootie shot meant they could safeguard themselves from any danger that could possibly result from interacting with a person of the opposite sex. It also gave them an excuse to interact with the opposite sex. It was a playful game, and it is still used once in awhile even though we are now older. Nick is evidence that young adults still engage in this playful game.

It is interesting that the cootie shot game has stayed with young adults. Young adults do not typically still recite jump-rope rhymes, but I have heard multiple young adults still use the cootie shot. It was a playful game in elementary school, and it remains a playful game in college. However, it has changed for college students because now it is an occasion for anyone involved in this occurrence to laugh and become a little bit nostalgic. Most of us are nostalgic when it comes to remembering the grade school days, and the cootie shot brings back a lot of memories. People then tend to discuss these memories, seeing what similar things they did or had at their separate elementary schools.

Annotation: Stoehr, Shelley. Weird on the Outside. New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, 1995.