My source is a current college student who experienced the game “Jinx” growing up and in elementary school. Jinx is a children’s folk game played when two individuals say the same word at the same time. Whoever says “jinx” first is then given rights to silence the other until they say they are unjinxed. A jinxed person can either wait or beg the other to allow them to talk or they can secretly take a belonging of the other and hide it. Once that person realizes what they’re missing, the jinxed person can use it as blackmail to get unjinxed and can finally talk again.

Jinx is a typical children’s game of teasing and playing with another person. It teaches children how to learn how to take a joke and to play with one another in good fun. The game is taught from one to another by seeing it, or by being jinxed and realizing the consequences. Like other typical children’s folklore, jinxing is an imitation of more adult ideas. In the game of Jinx, the notions of authority over another person and blackmail are taught, though of course to a miniscule scale, much like how the game of cooties and rejection is also laden with adult themes.