Tag Archives: classroom games

Secret Agents

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 7
Occupation: Student
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/02/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

The following is collected during a routine call with my younger brother.

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Performance

The following is a story told to me by the interviewee.

“Yes, I have a secret organization in class where I’m the boss. And I have all my secret agents and they do things for me. I send them out on missions to collect pencils and collect all the secrets from other people in the class. And then we guard those secrets, or we can also use those secrets if we need to, but we don’t, because we are the good guys. And there is another secret organization that Christian is in charge of. And we are going to have a war soon but I will win when we do so it’s okay. He doesn’t have as many secret agents as I do, I think he only has five or six, but about half the class is my secret agent.”

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Analysis

Secret Organizations are always common amongst children in schools. They are starting to meet peers for the first time and naturally are starting to create in groups and out-groups. They are searching for a sense of belonging, and for the first time are experiencing what it means to feel community. Thus it makes sense that they would actively work to creating their own communities. And add on the imagination of a child, secret organizations with spies and agents is a common answer. What is interesting is the competitive level that the interviewee felt to express. That he had a better agent organization than his friend because he had more people with him. Thus we see numbers is what gives this organization power. This makes sense for a child at the age of seven, the more friends you have, the more popular you are in class, and thus the more power you possess.

Who’s Got the Rock?

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Actress
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25th, 2012
Primary Language: English

Who’s Got the Rock?

Is a game the source learned at her high school near Augusta, Georgia. Apparently the game was originated by her Latin class, and is still played at the school to this day.

“Our teacher wasn’t very aware of what was going on at most times, so while she would lecture us in the front of the class we’d play this game. Basically someone would just wrap a piece of paper around any solid object they had. I think the original rock was an empty ink cartridge for a printer, but sometimes people would use tennis balls or scotch tape dispensers wrapped in paper. There was always one rock per day at least and people would just throw it from one person to the next to see who could throw it at the most daring time and not get caught. If Ms. Grimaude ever caught anyone and took the rock away, everyone would try to determine who had made the next rock. We had a chant we’d do—well I’m not sure it was a chant, but we’d do that thing where you shout but are also whispering but everyone would say it at different times. Once the first rock of the day was thrown we’d say “who’s got the rock?!” until someone threw the next rock. The funny thing was, we didn’t have that many rocks taken away the whole year. She never really caught us except a few times so much of the time when we would say “who’s got the rock” it was more of a dare for whoever had it to throw it at that exact moment. Ultimately it got out of hand with my class and people started throwing eggs and stuff. My brother though, who is 3 years younger than me told me that they still were playing that game in Latin class when he was there, which made me happy that we had created a game that lived on at the school.”

 

This game is interesting to me because there doesn’t seem to be any particular point to it. There’s never any winner or goal to the game, except to unite the class against the teacher. It’s also a rite of passage for Latin students at the school, the game continues to this day because if you haven’t played Who’s Got the Rock?, you clearly weren’t part of the Latin program.