Category Archives: Game

Chinese Restaurant Clapping Game

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student/Musician
Residence: Pennsylvania/California
Performance Date: 4/11/19
Primary Language: English

Context

Having collected a fairly common children’s game, thumb wars, I sought a game or rhyme that was more obscure. While familiar with similar games such as Paddy Cake (which the informant mentioned for reference), I had never heard of the Chinese Restaurant variant.

Main Piece

When I was little, on the playground we used to have… it was a sort of “paddy cake”-like game that had, um… a rhyme about a Chinese restaurant. So you would start and you would clap your hands together and clap opposite hands with your partner, and it would be like:

“I went to a Chinese restaurant 

To buy a loaf of bread bread bread

The waiter asked me what I want 

And this is what I said said said”

and then you would point to your eye and say:

“I know karate”

then you would punch and say:

“Punch in the body”

Then you would cover your hands with your mouth and say:

“Oops I’m sorry”

Then you would wag your finger and say:

“Don’t tell my mommy”

And then the most upsetting part is that you would move your eyelids in accordance with people’s race, so you would say:

“Chinese” — pull your eyelids up — or down, I don’t remember

“Japanese” — pull your eyelids up and then you say:

“Freeze!”

And then whoever said “check please!” first would win.

Notes

As the informant notes, the game is upsetting, enforcing the kind of racial stereotypes and prejudices that would have been seen as innocuous in past decades. As such, I would classify it as an example of blason populaire. It is through games and rhymes such as these, shared among children during their formative years, that casual racism insidiously engrains itself into young minds. Thankfully, the informant grew up and now recognizes the problematic nature of this game, but many others likely do not, and maybe even teach it to their children one day.

Thumb Wars

Nationality: American (German heritage)
Age: 21
Occupation: Student/Musician
Residence: Wisconsin/California
Performance Date: 4/10/19
Primary Language: English

Context

I asked the informant for a popular schoolyard game from his childhood, and this was his immediate response. Though I had played many a thumb war, his opening signature chant varied from mine.

Main Piece

Alright: thumb wars! Everyone used to do ‘em, and it starts off with the signature chant: “one, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war” as you move your thumb from left to right in opposition to your opponent’s. Sometimes, I don’t know if this is a thing out here, but we had “one, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war. five, six, seven, eight, you’re the thumb I really hate” um, I’m not sure if that’s a thing out here but we did that back home and then, you know, obviously you just like take your thumb and you try to push the other person’s thumb down as your hands are intertwined. It is cheating to move the elbow, um, it has to be all the thumb and yeah, the winner gets nothing, besides pride.

Notes

Thumb wars were very popular during my childhood, and so this recounting may not be the most valuable piece of lore, but I was intrigued by the variation in the classic introductory chant. While familiar with the first part — “one, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war,” in my experience, it is followed by “five, six, seven, eight, try to keep your thumbs straight.” Because my informant grew up in Wisconsin, I believe it may be a regional variance.

 

Baby Blue

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 12
Occupation: 6th Grade Student
Residence: Central LA
Performance Date: March 21 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Context: I was teaching a class of sixth graders for the Joint Education Project (JEP) in a middle school near USC.

Discussion

Instructor: So, after learning the differences between myths, tales and legends, can anyone give me an example of a legend that they have heard of? (A number of different students interjected to corroborate to the first student’s story, they have been given aliases to protect their identities)

Angel: Baby Blue! (Announced loudly)

Instructor: What or who is Baby Blue?

Angel: It’s like uhm you go into the bathroom and look into the mirror and uh fold your arms, and if you feel a weight in your arms its Baby Blue and you gotta drop it!

Maria (interjecting): No no no, you gotta go into the bathroom by yourself and turn the lights off and cradle your arms like you’re holding a baby and say ‘Baby Blue’ in the mirror three times. If you feel a weight in your arms like you were holding a baby, you gotta pretend to drop it in the toilet and flush it before it gets too heavy.

Instructor: Or else what happens?

Maria: The baby will haunt your family.

Daisy (interjecting): No if you don’t flush the baby, her mom will turn up behind you and scream at you to give it back and kill you if you don’t. (Other students nodded along or exclaimed ‘yeh’ as if her version was the most well-known)

Instructor: So, who is baby blue?

Maria: Its like a evil baby that will haunt you if you don’t get rid of it I think.

Instructor: And who is the women?

Daisy: Some kinda evil spirit I guess.

Instructor: Have any of you done this?

Daisy: I tried it once with my big sister.

Instructor: And did the woman show up?

Daisy: No but I felt a weight in my arms and through it in the toilet so maybe I did it before the baby grew too big.

Instructor: Was it a scary experience.

Daisy: Yeh I guess, me and my sister ran outta the bathroom straight after flushing the toilet.

Analysis

This is a very interesting legend. It is very much like Bloody Mary accept with a baby involved. After some research I discovered that some people think that the mother who appears is Bloody Mary and that Baby Blue is her child that she murdered. The legend seemed fairly well-known throughout the classroom of thirty students but some new it better than others. It is clear that Angel was more of a passive barer of the legend and had not participated in the legend quest. Those that did had a better knowledge of the backstory to the legend, which was usually learned from older relatives. The students did not seem to be overly scared of this legend and approached it as more of a game. They were adamant that there was a right way and a wrong way to do this pseudo-ritual.

There are theories that the Bloody Mary legend is related to young girls’ oncoming period cycle. The legend is most common with girls aged 8 to 14 and takes place alone in a bathroom where you see a bloody woman appear behind you. This could be some kind of folk ritual, beyond the knowledge of the participants, to prepare girls for the oncoming changes to their bodies’ which takes place near this age range and usually alone in a bathroom. This intense bodily change might be more easy cope with when compared with the extreme of seeing a creepy woman covered in blood behind you. I think that the Baby Blue legend is a continuation of this theory. It is in someway ingratiating girls to the idea that if you feel a baby growing heavy in your arms (which are cradled at your stomach) that you should somehow get rid of it, or else it might haunt you for the rest of your life. This seems to be suggesting to the girls that take part in this pseudo-ritual, on a deeply subconscious level, that if you get pregnant at a young age (as pregnancy tests usually take place in the bathroom alone) that you should somehow get rid of the baby before it stays with you forever. If this is the case, this legend has an extremely dark aspect to it. Obviously because of the fact that this deeper meaning operates on a subconscious level, boys take part in the legend too. This is for the surface reason that it is scary and thrilling which is probably why the girls do it too but it may be communicating a deeper message to them specifically.

Killer, a High School Folk Game, and Legends About It

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York.  They attended Hunter College High School, a specialized high school. Basically, it’s a public school and thus free, but one must test to get in. I also attended this school for sometime and also know the game. I have always been fascinated where the game comes from and have played similar, although less violent, versions elsewhere.

 

Piece:

“Killer is..uh.. So its like everyone’s on a team, I don’t know if this is how it started, but it’s how it ended, everyone is on a team. There’s like freshman girls, freshman boys, sophomore girls, sophomore boys. And you have to like assassinate — it keeps going beyond sophomore, its all. It’s not really separated by gender either, you can have sophomore mixed too, it’s whatever, there’s teams. I think that just happened because people do it in friend groups, so it’s like if your friend group is girls, if your friend group is boys, if your friend group is mixed. Um… There also were two junior girls teams, so yeah, I dunno, they end up with titles too. Like, uh, one year every team was named after a different album. So anyway Killer is uh, you have to kill — whichever team has a person still alive at the end of the game is the winner, so you have kill people on the other teams. And you do that with tracer guns, which have little plastic tracers inside them so pew pew [they mime finger guns]. Um, you shoot other people and if they get hit by the tracer then they’re dead. Um.. you kill a whole team, they’re out of the running. Whoever wins, wins the whole pot, which is usually like a thousand bucks. And there were like legends that like someone in the past had slept on the roof to avoid being killed because if you were like in the block of the school you can’t get killed. So he slept there the entire time and people brought him food and stuff. Uum, just slept on the roof. And there was another story were um, so this one kid was like “I know how I’m going to get this other person is I’m going to dress up as a homeless person, I’m going to disguise myself as a homeless person. I’m going to paint m-my tracer gun black. I’m gonna sit in the subway station, wait for him to show up”. So this guys stands up, pulls out his GUN and the police ALSO do that. And I dunno how it ended, he lived, everyone lived. I don’t think the police even shot, probably because the guy was whi… Nothing happened but like jesus christ, could you be stupider? I remember those were two big stories that got passed down from year to year. The administration were not a fan of it at all. They sent out emails every year being like “DON’T PLAY KILLER”, but it had not affect.

 

Hitting the Roof of the Car When Running Reds and Stripping

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/23/18
Primary Language: English

Context:

The subject is a white, gender non-binary individual who is a native Angeleno. They have been driving since they were 15. I brought up people hitting the roof of their car when running red lights as an example of the folklore I was trying to collect when they offered me this. I’d never heard of this stripping game style and it totally divorces the custom from the superstition it is usually associated with.

 

Piece:

“It’s a stupid high school game where if you through a, through a light when it’s turning red, like when its yellow. Pretty much, everyone has to hit the roof and whoever doesn’t hit the roof has to take off a piece of clothing. I’ve never done it, but I’ve heard of it.”