Tag Archives: children’s game

Chopsticks: The Game

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/25/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

How do you play?

“Ok, so each player put out their pointer finger on each hand, ok, wait I know this. So… hmmm wait… the goal of the game is to get your partner to have five fingers out on both hands. And then they lose. And the way you play is you stick out your pointer finger on each hand, and you tap one of your partner’s hands, and they have to add a-as many fingers as you currently have out to that hand.”

Do you have any special rules?

“Yes, so let’s say you have three fingers out on one hand and one on the other, and then you want to switch, you can hit your hands and make them two and two. You can transfer as many fingers as you want to your other hand. And even if your hand is out, you can, like, still redistribute fingers to it and bring it back in.”

Context:

The informant is my twin sister. She is Jewish and attended public school her entire life. This information was collected during a family zoom call where we were checking in with each other.

Analysis:

My informant’s account of Chopsticks’ rules was quite difficult to understand, which emphasizes that this game is best taught visually and learned through practice. Chopsticks is an engaging and competitive game that lets children exercise their mental math and strategy skills. It’s complicated enough to warrant fierce competition, but simple enough to master after only playing a few rounds. I even established social groups in elementary school through playing chopsticks and similar games.

Pooh’s Sticks

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Richardson, TX
Performance Date: April 30, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main piece: Pooh’s Sticks is something we always do, and my dad did it as a kid too, where you find a pond with a bridge over it, or a river – something that has moving water. Everybody finds a stick that they think is going to be the winning stick, you drop it off one side, run to the other, and whoever’s stick comes out first is the winner. 

I don’t know why we call it that. I think it comes from Winnie the Pooh, they do that.

Background: O is twenty years old, but has been playing Pooh’s Sticks since early childhood. While she grew up in Richardson, Texas, she was taught this game by her father, who grew up in Malmesbury, a town in Wiltshire, England. She and her brother, who is sixteen, continue to play Pooh’s Sticks with her parents. The game is not specific to a particular location; she says that they’ll play the game whenever “we come across a good bridge and river”. 

Context: I initially approached O to discuss folklore in the visual arts, as she is an illustrator. While we were discussing it, she asked if she could tell me about folklore from her childhood. I enthusiastically said yes, and she told me about Pooh’s Sticks. She finds the game quaint and charming, and got really excited when telling me about the races she’ll have with her parents and brother. It’s a game she still enjoys playing to this day.

Analysis: This folk game appeals as it costs nothing to play, can be played with any indeterminate number of players, and requires no skill set nor set age. Pooh’s Sticks was initially taught to O as a small child by her father, showing that it is a way to keep a kid entertained when there are no toys or other means of entertainment around. It also gives little kids equal opportunity to win the game, which is a rare occurrence for young children, and something O cited as a particularly exciting part of playing – that she could beat her mom or dad at something. M, O’s father, grew up in the rural village of Malmesbury, and O recalls him telling her about many games from his childhood, all stemming from the nature around them – he and his friends would play frisbee with a frozen cow patty, or throw sticky burs at people to tease them. It seems as if Pooh’s Sticks was another game that arose from this setting, although O (living in Texas) has played this game with her parents in multiple locations.  

The Game

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2021
Primary Language: English

“The Game? Like “I lost the Game?” It sucks and it’s stupid. Basically, if you think about the Game, you lose the game, and you can’t win. But if someone loses the Game, they have to announce that they lost the Game and then everyone else around them hates them because they also lose the Game and it sucks.”

Thoughts: This is a fun bit of children’s folklore. Almost everyone I know has heard of The Game, so I did some digging online about the origins. According to Wikipedia, it probably originated in England or Australia, sometime during the 20th century. 

PS: If you’re reading this, you lost The Game.

Miss Mary Mack

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Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Appointment Coordinator
Residence: Cloverdale, California
Performance Date: May 1, 2021
Primary Language: English

Background:

My mother, the informant for this piece, tells me that it’s a handclapping game she learned on the playground while growing up in Cloverdale, California during the 1970s. Additionally, she notes that it was one of her favorite games which is why she remembers it so well.

Context:

This handclapping game is played by singing the song below, accompanied by a rhythmic pattern of three claps–one during each of the three words in each line. My informant also stated that it can be played at twice the speed, or started slow and gradually increased; this version of the game is usually played as a competition, and the first person to make a mistake loses.

Main Piece:

“Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack

All dressed in black, black, black

With silver buttons, buttons, buttons

All down her back, back, back

She asked her mother, mother, mother

For fif-ty cents, cents, cents

To see the elephant, elephant, elephant

Jump the fence, fence, fence

He jumped so high, high, high

He touched the sky, sky, sky

And didn’t come back, back, back

‘Til the Fourth of July, -ly, -ly

Analysis:

This playground game could be as innocent as it sounds, or, like a great deal of other children’s folklore, could have some kind of metaphorical meaning. If this is the case, it sounds like miss Mary Mack is a young girl who recently lost her father, indicated by her mother’s dressing in all black. Following the same train of thought, the fifty cents she asks for could be the symbolic payment for the ferryman her father needs to pass through the underworld, as was popularized by the Greek myth of Charon. Additionally, the elephant touching the sky and not coming back ’til the Fourth of July could be symbolic of the girl’s father reaching heaven, subsequently being celebrated on the Fourth of July. For this last part to be the case, however, the song would have to have its roots in the Revolutionary War era, which could be possible.

“Four-Square” Rules and Children’s Social Space

Nationality: Vietnamese-American
Age: 10
Occupation: Elementary School Student
Residence: Iowa
Performance Date: 5/1/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

B: So basically, there’s four squares. So each square has a name. So the first square is “baby,” the second one is, “jack,” the third is, “queen,” and the last one is “king.” So basically, the king, serves the ball to the other square, and the ball can only hit your square once. If it hits your square two times then you’re out. And then if it bounces in your square and you hit it to the other square, and if you get that person out, then you move up a square until you’re King. and then all the lines are out, and if the ball hits the line then you’re out. 

Background: 

My informant is my cousin’s 10-year-old son, who is in the fourth grade. He lives in a suburban neighborhood near Des Moines, which is the capital of Iowa. He goes to a public elementary school in his district, where he learned how to play this game from his friend in the third grade. He tells me that he likes this game mostly because of its social aspect; he plays with his friends and converses with them, telling each other stories while they wait for their turns.

Context:

This is a transcript of our conversation over the phone. Lately, he has been telling me stories about what goes on during school, though this conversation was prompted specifically for this collection project. I was curious about what kind of games he plays during school with other kids, and four-square was unsurprisingly brought up.

Thoughts:

Growing up also going to a public elementary school, four-square was a popular recess activity. I was curious about what kind of different rules his school might have for their version of the game and was surprised about how simple and similar it was to my school’s version ten years before him. The main difference was how his school named the squares, which seem to go along with the suits in a deck of cards, aside from “baby.” Our version simply numbered them from 1 to 4, with 1 being the top position (which would be their “king.”) The most fascinating aspect of his story is how four-square was not just a physical activity for kids to burn off the calories of lunch and antsy-ness built up from sitting in class all day, but how it was also a highly social activity. Within our larger conversation, he revealed to me that it was through playing four-square and waiting in line to play four-square that he learned about many other folk stories such as “bloody mary” and the phenomenon of killer clowns from 2016. Thus, children’s games such as this game of four-square can be much more than physical activities to burn off energy. They can represent social spaces where children test each other’s fears and courage.