The informant is my 19-year-old cousin who now lives in Pomona, CA, but grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She learned this game from other kids at her international elementary school.
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“So I don’t know if this really counts as a game, but there’s this thing we used to do when we were little…here. Stick out your arm. Okay, so, one person holds their arm out like that [gestures to my arm] and then looks away, or, actually, they close their eyes. Okay, so close your eyes. And then the other person kind of walks their fingers up their arm, but like, really slowly. And the point of the game is for the person who has their eyes closed, they have to see if they can guess when you make it to their elbow. Well, not their elbow, but, like, the inside of their elbow. Or whatever it’s called where your arm bends, but on the other side.”
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Even though she attended an international school, my cousin learned this game in Ethiopia. I found this incredibly interesting, because I also knew this game when I was little, even though I grew up in the New York, and other people who grew up in other states also know this game. It’s interesting how the same games (and more broadly the same folklore) arise in so many different places that are seemingly unrelated. There are other examples of this, including that every culture has a version of the idea of dragons, but this was the first example I had really seen personally of such a specific piece of folklore existing in two such different places. Though it is easier to deduce how such a game might have reached my cousin’s school, being that it was an English-language international school where many students were the children of American expats, it really reinforced to me the “multiplicity” aspect of Dundes’s definition of folklore, which I find incredibly fascinating.
Category Archives: Game
French hand game
The informant is my 19-year-old friend from my French high school. Though she currently lives in New York, she grew up in Germany, and her family is Moroccan. I asked her what games, songs, or rhymes she remembered from growing up, and she volunteered this hand game that is commonly played in French elementary schools. My friend did not know the name of this game, nor does she remember being taught it or teaching it to anyone, but she played it with her friends and most of the kids she grew up with also knew it.
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“Okay, you start by saying, “Si tu perds t’auras un gage,” which means “if you lose, you’ll have a dare,” and then you start the game. Although, to be honest, I don’t think I ever actually did a dare after playing. So … [demonstrating with hand gestures] you clap your hands one time, then you clap once with the other person … diagonally, and then you clap your hands again. Then the same on the other side [demonstrating], then your hands again, then both of your hands with the other person’s hands. And you just do it faster and faster until someone messes up.”
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Though my friend and I both went to french-language schools growing up, she grew up in Germany, and I lived in New York, which made it interesting to me that we both had played this game as children. This was another place I observed Dundes’s stipulation that folklore must have multiplicity. I also thought it was interesting that the game never really had a name; an interesting aspect of folklore is that things can be spread, reproduced, and taught to other people without having a specific name for what that thing is. I also thought that might have to do with the fact that it one of the things children teach each other, which might be it is so simple (no name, very easy to learn). Another thing I found interesting was that neither she nor I ever actually had to perform a dare after losing the game, because the fact that the song starts off with that line suggests that there was a time where that was a legitimate part of the game, and that over time it was eventually lost. I thought it was an interesting example of the fact that folklore is never static, because the game is so simple and has so few parts, and yet it has still changed over time.
Kagome – Japanese Children’s Game
NC: There’s a Japanese game that children play called kagome, um…so it’s-it’s really similar to ring around a rosey in that…um…it was based on…experiments that people were doing, so Ring around the rosie is about um the disease the bubonic plague but um uh kagome is about experiments that people were doing um on the Japanese and they- they basically took children and they mutilated them I think that’s what it is. And um they would haunt people in the building like they would haunt the doctors and they would say um “kagome, kagome” and some other uh words and they would basically play that game in a circle and um that’s just like the ghost story behind that game.
Background:
Location of Story – Japan
Location of Performance – Dormitory room, Los Angeles, CA, night
Context: This performance took place in a group setting – about 2-3 people – in a college dormitory room. This performance was prompted by the call for stories about beliefs, ghosts, or superstitions as examples of folklore via a group message. NC approached me in person in response to the text and this is the second of two stories she presented. The first was about a monster who took the form of a beautiful, floating female head that had been decapitated and haunts a building. It was apparent that NC had just recently discovered this game because she was looking at her computer the whole time.
Analysis: I think the comparison to “Ring Around the Rosey” is really effective here because it reinforces the idea that games or rhythm games are often counter-hegemonic and can critique a system under the guise of play. It is an indirect form of protest and also a way to be able to process the trauma of an experience such as this with humor and distance from the actual reality. On a different note, I really wished I would have NC where she discovered this game because I can understand stumbling upon a ghost story but not a traditional Japanese child’s game; I want to know where these are being documented online since she had her computer.
Annotation: Upon further research, I discovered that the folk song element to this performance is actually much more essential to the folk game in other collected versions. For example, there is a documentation of this game in Highlights magazine for kids will additional information about how to perform the song. This version documents the chant as, “Can you guess? Can you guess? Who is right behind you? Could it be, possibly…” and then the participants would recite their names until “it says stop.” I could not identify what the “it” of this game is, but what is interesting to note here is that the word kogome is missing from this particular chant. This may very well because it is a translation, but for me, it demonstrates a lack of that historical context. The meaning is even more deeply hidden in the practice of the game. Additionally, Highlights includes the physical rules of the game, which involve being in a circle and blindfolded. See citation below for a PDF of the Highlights article.
Citation: Yasuda, Anita. “Kagome Kagome.” Highlights for Children, vol. 65, no. 10, 10, 2010, pp. 12. ProQuest, http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.libproxy1.usc.edu/docview/756206958?accountid=14749.
Going Through Doors Riddle
JK: Ok, so, it’s a blackout and you’re walking along uh street uh a dark neighborhood street and you see one little cottage that is lit up by candlelight so you go inside and there’s a red door and a purple door. Which one do you go through?
VG: The red.
JK: K, so you go through the red door and you are presented with two more doors. There’s a brown regular looking door and there’s uh- polka dot door. Which door do you go through?
VG: The brown.
JK: You go through the brown door and you are presented with two more doors…it’s a black door and a white door. Which door do you go through?
VG: The white door.
JK: Ok, so you go through the white door and you come out of…the s- into uh- a space brightly lit by candles and there’s a couple there and they’re very angry that you broke into their home and you can either choose death by uh their dogs who will tear you apart or you can choose death by electric chair. Which one do you choose and why?
VG: I choose electric chair-
JK: Why?
VG: Because it’s faster.
JK: Nah-
EM: I know what this is- can I answer it?
JK: Yeah.
EM: Cause- wait there’s no electricity right?
JK: Yeah, you choose the electric chair because the power is out.
(Everyone laughs)
VG: Dammit.
Background:
Location of story – N/A
Location of Performance – Different student’s dormitory room, Los Angeles, CA, afternoon
Context: This performance took place between 2-3 people who were working on a film project together for class. This story came in response to my question if anyone had time to talk before the film shoot to talk about traditions specific to school, festivals, holidays, and riddles. JK and I had just met recently on this project. His story had just followed two about high school traditions.
Analysis: My favorite part about this performance is that the other person in the room, EK, had heard of this riddle before. Moreover, EK’s question about whether she can spoil the end demonstrates the universally understood pressure to let the one being challenged demonstrate their wit. I was actually nervous participating in this performance because historically, I am not very good at riddles and whenever I “fail” I always feel socially inferior. It may seem silly, but my anxiety only confirms the social implications of these riddles.
Punch Buggy Game
Context: Going into this folklore project, I knew that I wanted to collect somebody’s personal account of the Punch Buggy game. This is a game that my sisters and I used to play whenever we rode in the car as children and it involves the pointing out of Volkswagen Beetle cars. Many of my friends who went to my elementary school also played the game whenever they were in the car, and I distinctly remember riding in with them and thinking, ‘that’s not how you play the game.” Looking back now, I realize that they were not playing the game wrong and were actually demonstrating the multiplicity and variation that is intrinsic to folklore. I was interviewing an informant, an art major at USC and avid skateboarder, when I was reminded about my interest in the game. I asked the 19-year-old informant from Saratoga, California, if he had ever played the punch buggy game and, if so, how he had played it.
Piece: “Yeah, so, me and my older sister used to always play the punch buggy game. It was a favorite of ours and we were pretty competitive about it, as siblings usually are. So, on long road trips, my family and I used to drive up to Bear Valley from San Jose, which is like a three-hour car ride. And I’d usually be stuffed in the back seat with my sister who would like to mess with me all the time. So, um, whenever you saw a Volkswagen bug driving down the road, in a parking lot, in someone’s driveway, or I guess anywhere, you would immediately punch the person who you are playing with and say, ‘no punch backs!’ No, you would say, ‘Punch buggy no punch backs!’ It wouldn’t be that hard of punch, just a hit in the arm. But we also had some variations on those rules, like I knew a lot of people who would just see a VW Bug, punch the other person, and that was it. But our version was more complicated. So, if you saw an out-of-state license plate, you would get two punches. And I forgot to mention that one punch equals one point. So if you saw a punch buggy with a Washington license plate, you’d be able to punch your sibling. And I think we had some other rule involving the colors of the cars too, but I can’t remember that exactly. I think maybe if you saw the same color twice then your points would multiply, or some shit. I don’t know, there were a bunch of different factors in it, but I can’t remember all of them.”
Analysis: I find it fascinating that without me ever mentioning it, the informant spoke about how the Punch Buggy game’s rules have multiple variations. I remember about ten years ago, in attempt to capitalize on the popular children’s game, the Volkswagen motor company released a series of commercials which proposed a new game that could be played with Volkswagen Beetles. In the commercial, a person would see one of the cars and say the color of the car followed by the word “one.” For example, if you saw a red car, you would say “red one.” I remember a few of my friends playing this game in the months following the commercials’ release; however, after a while, people lost interest and the game died out. I believe that this reflects the human desire to hold on to folkloric and organically developed traditions in an increasingly artificial world. The entire category of road trip games came out of the boredom of riding in a car for long periods of time. For children especially, games like these are necessary outlets for fun since sitting in the back seat of a car can often feel uncomfortable and constraining and it can be difficult to talk to the person who is driving or sitting in the passenger seat.
Annotation: For variations of the rules of Punch Buggy, see:
Polk, Janet. Rules for Playing Slug Bug and Punch Buggy. AuthorHouse, 2006.