Tag Archives: cheese touch

Cheese Touch

Text

“When I was in like elementary school a lot of us would mess around with a game called the cheese touch like if you said cheese touch when you were tagging someone then they would have it. And the only way to prevent it would be to have your fingers crossed. And once you have it you have to give it to someone else or you’re stuck with it. So, I remember we would always have our fingers crossed because anytime was fair game. I remember getting frustrated because kids would lie and say their fingers were crossed when they got tagged. Me and my friends would team up in secret and promise we wouldn’t tag each other if we got the cheese touch. In my senior year of high school, we played senior assassin which gave me flashbacks to the cheesetouch because of the safe rules and the lies that would be created after someone got out. I was completely into both games because they brought out the inner kid in me and my competitive nature.”

Context

I first saw this game when I watched the Diart of a Wimpy Kid movie. I remember being at my friend’s house in his living room watching with my childhood friend group of 4 guys. When we saw the cheese touch scene with thought it was funny but also disgusting because the cheese was rotten. Other kids at our elementary watched the movie too and one of them copied the movie. Since we were immature kids who just wanted to have fun, the mention of the cheese touch got everyone riled up and the game began.

Analysis

The cheese touch game shows the diversity of forms that folklore can come in. It is a variation of another folk belief known as the “cooties” because they both involve infecting others with a negative thing. While it originated in a movie, kids around the US adapted the game into their own and transformed a silly game into a national form of folklore. Folklore is highly prominent in the younger generations because with social media and televesion, kids are prone to copy what they say without questioning its validity. Similar to Alan Dundes’s idea, folklore functions socially within groups that share similiarity giving mutual trust in this scenario. The secret alliances he formed with his friends show the strength of culture through folklore. Regardless of the rules of the game, their tight knit folk group shaped by friendship and a collective interest to not get the cheese touch led to them bending the rules and creating shared identity.

Cheese Touch

Context: The Cheese Touch game was popularized shortly after the publishing of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and corresponding movies. The Bone Touch was one group’s variation of this popular game, instead altered to fit a rural ranch setting, replacing the forbidden cheese with a cow hide being displayed as decor.

A.F. : Okay. The Cheese Touch is, so, um, typically if someone touched cheese in elementary school they would have the Cheese Touch and the only way to get rid of it is to pass it on to someone else.
P.Z. : Yeah, I know that we played that at my elementary school, but we had also, because we were in rural San Diego, we went to a ranch and there was a cow hide, and it still had a bone attached to it, so that started the Bone Touch, but yeah, the Cheese Touch.
A.F. : Yeah
P.Z. : That was really popular, what, late two-thousands? Early two-thousands?
A.F. : Late two-thousands, early twenty-tens.

Thoughts: I had read the books that this game was based on, so the game made perfect sense to me when it began gaining popularity. This seemed to be extremely popular for a number of years, and seemed just a variation on the ‘cooties’ game that children often also play.

Cheese Touch

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 03/23/2019
Primary Language: English

Text

“Cheese touch” a game of tag

 

Background

The informant told me that she learned this game while in elementary school and that she’s noticed that most people played this game when they were younger, even if they did not go to her school. The game originally came from the popular book “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” when a character touched a piece of moldy cheese and was diagnosed with “the cheese touch.” This game quickly caught on with elementary school children across the nation, even with kids who did not read the book. The game was essentially tag, but instead of “being it” it was called having the cheese touch. The informant notes that it was occasionally used to bully other children (popular kids would sometimes give the touch to a kid they thought was weird so that they would have an excuse to run away from or ignore said kid). She said that boys would mostly give it to other boys unless a boy had a crush on a girl, in which case he would give it to her. She confessed that she never really believed in the cheese touch but that it was just a fun game to play on the black top.

 

Context

The informant goes to a school in Southern California and grew up in Newport beach where she attended a nice public school.

 

Thoughts

While this game was just something that the kids used to entertain themselves during recess, it gives insight on how young children socialize with one another. I find it interesting that the children would use the same strategy on a kid they were bullying and the kid they “had a crush on.” Because children have no prior relationship experience, they don’t know how to handle romantic feelings and may resort to this tactic in order to express their emotions.