My Informant was a 21 year old female who moved to the United States from Bogota, Colombia in 2004. She lives five houses down on my street.

Story: Where I used to live in Bogota, there was this game that us kids used to play called “Pico, Pico, Beso” and it was, basically, this kissing game. It was like Tag, except girls would run away from the boys and if they were caught the boys got to give them a kiss on the cheek. If they were got caught again, then the boy got to kiss their other cheek. And if they were caught the third time, it was on the mouth. But only if the same boy caught them three times…not three different boys. Does that make sense? And, you know, usually girls played with the boys the liked and they’d “get caught” so it was a lot of fun. Just kid games.

Collector: How old were you when you played this game?

Informant: Around eleven or twelve.

Collector: What does “Pico, Pico, Beso” translate to? In English?

Informant: Like, what is it called? A peck on the cheek? Yeah? Yea. Like Peck, Peck, Kiss.

Collector: Do you know where this game originated from? Who taught it to you?

Informant: Some older kids at school were playing, I think, and my friend taught me how to play.

This is a great example of children learning about the world by imitating the world. They look to older people for guidance and, in this case, my informant and her friends learned from peers at school. There’s this whole concept that adults tend to shy away from mentioning anything of sexual nature around children, so it makes sense that they learned this game from other children instead of adults.