Tag Archives: elementary school

Wallball variant – Butts Up

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 4/30/13
Primary Language: English

My informant used to play a variant of Wallball at his Bay Area elementary school called “Butts Up.”  Like with regular Wallball, the game was played against the wall of a building or room, with one ball and many participants.  Players had to throw the ball against the wall without the ball first bouncing off the ground.  If the ball touches a player and then touches the floor, that player must run to the wall before the next time someone performs a successful wall bounce (player -> wall without touching floor).  If a player makes it to the wall in time, he or she is safe and may resume play.  If the ball makes it there first, that player receives a point.  Additionally, a player may attempt to perform a fast catch, whereby the player catchs the ball immediately after it has bounced off the wall, before it touches the floor again.  If the player successfully performs a fast catch, then the player who threw the ball gets a point.

My informant’s version of the game uses letters instead of points.  Each point spells out the word B-U-T-T-S and when a player has gotten all 5 letters, they must stand against the wall with their butt in the air while every other player gets a chance to peg them in the ass with balls.  Additionally, instead of a rubber playground ball, Butts Up was played exclusively with a tennis ball, and players were allowed to catch the ball in between throws, instead of just fast catches.  Also after a player has been ass-pegged for spelling BUTTS, instead of being out, the player simply returns to the game with a clean slate, albeit a sore ass.  Another one of my informants also said that some kids from his elementary school, back in New York, played this version of Wallball, and even called it by the same name of “Butts Up.”  According to him, this version of the game was reserved for the hardest of hardcore children.

Wallball variant – Ledgeball

Nationality: American
Age: 83
Occupation: Businessman - retired
Residence: Glencoe, Illinois
Performance Date: 4/10/2013
Primary Language: English

My informant played a game similar to what is now known today as Wallball.  His version of the game was called Ledgeball due to the ledge against which it was played.  Ledgeball does not have the same free-for-all nature that Wallball does, and is played for points instead of for staying power.  However, it still involves throwing a ball against a flat surface and catching it.

According to my informant, the game was played by a group of throwers and one or two defenders.  Throwers would take turns throwing the ball against the ledge and trying to get it to land inside a marked area.  The defenders would attempt to catch the ball before it hit the ground.  If it hit the ground the throwers got a point.  If the defenders caught it or if it landed outside the marked area, then the defenders got a point.  One of the strategies that throwers could use was aiming very low on the ledge, so that the ball would only go a little bit before hitting the ground.  Another strategy was to throw it so that it would bounce over the heads of the defenders.   People who frequently defended would get really fast and develop good reflexes.  Ledgeball was played with either a tennis ball or a rubber playground ball, with tennis balls being preferred.

While this is markedly different from the Wallball that I played in my youth, this has many of the same traits.  Players throw a ball against a wall, other players attempt to catch it.  And most importantly it is played with either a tennis ball or a playground ball, both of which are still used in Wallball today.  Granted, this version of Wallball was played back in the 30’s so it will understandably be very different from what we know today, although it could be an ancestor or cousin of modern Wallball.

Valentines Day

Nationality: Romanian Italian American
Age: 53
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/17/2013
Primary Language: English

While she was at school, my informant partook in a Valentine’s Day activity wherein each child in the class makes Valentine’s cards for everyone, and then makes a box and decorates the box.  Children then go around and put their cards in everyone else’s box.  She said that she was not very good at arts and crafts as a young child and so she thought her box was terrible and plain compared to everyone else’s.  According to my informant, the other children’s boxes had dancers and straws and ballerinas and other fancy figures on the side of the box, and she felt very embarrassed about the state of her box.  Later in life, she said she realized that the other children had fancy boxes because their parent’s helped to make them.

When I was in elementary school, we too participated in the ritual of exchanging Valentine’s day cards.  We made our own box, but we usually just went out and bought a set of Valentine’s day cards at the store, which came in packs of 16 or 20.  Also it was tradition to tape a small portion of candy onto your Valentine’s cards.  Cards were given to every student regardless of the gender of the giver or the recipient.  For us, Valentine’s day was less about the making of boxes and more about getting free candy.

Wallball variant – Handball

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: 5/1/2013
Primary Language: English

According to my informant, he and his classmates would play a game they called Handball during recess.  The ‘court’ was a specific area in the school between a set of stairs one one side and a railing on the other.  Games were played with a rubber playground ball.  If a player hit the ball at either of these points, that player was out.  Also there was a small hole in the court, and hitting the ball there also merited an out.  Additionally, there was a grey line partway up the wall, and if a player hit the ball above this line, that player would be out.

In a way, this game seems to be similar to regular handball,  where the player must hit the ball against a wall in between a lower and upper line.  However, my informant’s version of the game involved a large number of players, usually 15 to 20 at the start, and had more specific boundaries that can be attributed to the nature of the court they used.  Overall, this appears to be a mix of regular handball and playground wallball.

Freeze Tag

Nationality: Latino-American
Age: 7
Occupation: Student
Residence: South Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 16, 2012
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Additional informant data: My informant is a 2nd-grader in South Los Angeles. He has lived in LA his entire life. He is Latino and speaks both Spanish and English. My informant attends a public, coeducational elementary school, which has students from kindergarten through fifth grade. Several times during the day, the children at his school have a recess period, when they’re given access to balls, jump ropes, etc., and are allowed to play outside.

Contextual data: My informant and I sat down outside his classroom after two months of my teaching his class the fundamentals of folklore through USC’s Joint Educational Program. After I began asking him about games he knows and plays often, he came up with freeze tag–a popular children’s game–and began explaining it to me. The following is an exact record of our conversation:

Jackson (me): Can you tell me about freeze tag?

I (my informant): Freeze tag is a game where you have to tag a person and they . . .  they stay there for . . . uhh . . . as long as they . . . uhh . . . forever, or if somebody stays, or if somebody tags them, somebody else, they . . . they . . . they’re unfroze, umm . . . if they’re all froze at the same time, the person who . . . the person who tagged them wins freeze tag and . . . if they don’t get all tagged . . . if they don’t get all tagged, then the person loses and the other people win, and that’s it.

J: And it ends when recess ends? Do you just keep playing until the bell?

I: Yeah.

J: Who do you usually play it with?

I: My bro— uhh . . . my friends, and my sister, and my brother, and my other sister, and my other brother.

J: Ok. How many people play, usually?

I: Five or six.

J: Ok. Do you remember who taught it to you, or did you kind of just learn it from people at school?

I: Umm . . . my . . . my . . . the one who taught it to me was my grandpa.

J: All right. Do you have anything else you want to say about freeze tag?

I: Nope.

I suppose few students in the United States–and probably in many other parts of the world–haven’t played tag at some point in their lives, and freeze tag is one of the most common versions. Whoever is “it” has the goal of “tagging” all the other players by chasing them down and touching them. When someone is tagged, they must freeze in place, and they can’t move until another player touches them.

While my informant didn’t have any ideas about the underlying significance of freeze tag, I have a few. The notion of one person being “it” and tagging others–rendering them physically immobile–seems to me like a sick person infecting others. If this is the case, it makes sense that someone else must “un-tag” them; that’s like being healed by somebody else. I discussed this with my roommate and he told me at his school they used to play this same exact game, but there they called it “germ tag,” and whoever was “it” had the germ. This reinforced my idea of freeze tag being modeled after some kind of fear of viruses or infection, as everyone is trying to run away from someone who has suddenly become dangerous, in a sense. In addition, this person is (or was) one of their close friends, which makes the chasing and tagging process a lot more disturbing. The person who is “it” is singled out and has the task of subduing all their friends, and the intentional quality of their behavior might reflect on the pervasive feelings against people who infect others with diseases.

Beyond this, freeze tag (or any kind of tag) could just be another schoolyard attempt at labeling “the Other,” or maybe it’s just a simple, fun game. It’s extremely common, but rather than discard it as commonplace because of it, I think we ought to pay special attention to the game precisely because it’s so widespread.

Annotation: Seen in the title and plot of Caroline B. Cooney’s 2004 novel Freeze Tag. Here is the Amazon.com synopsis of the book:

From best-selling author Caroline Cooney comes this suspenseful story of Meghan, whose relationship with her perfect boyfriend is destroyed by a girl who can freeze people with a touch of her finger.

When Meghan and West first played Freeze Tag with Lannie, it was no ordinary game. Because when Lannie tagged someone, they really froze. Icy blue and cold. Like death.

Now Meghan, West, and Lannie are in high school, and Meghan and West are in love. They’re the perfect couple. But Lannie is determined to have West for her very own… and if she doesn’t get her way, she’ll freeze Meghan… to death.

http://www.amazon.com/Freeze-Tag-Point-Caroline-Cooney/dp/0590456814