Tag Archives: Game

Five Stones

Nationality: Singaporean Chinese
Occupation: Retiree
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: March 2007
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Teochow, Cantonese, Bahasa Melayu, Hokkien

A childhood game, played primarily by girls with five small cloth ‘stones’ that are either filled with sands or beans. Game involves throwing and catching the ‘stones’ while not touch the other. There are five stages to this games, the first stage is when you take one stone and throw it up in the air while snatching one on the ground without touching any of the other stones, and then catch the one that you threw up in the air. If you touched any other  ‘stone’ or missed the falling ‘stone’ you’d lose your turn. This goes on till the fifth round, which you have all five in your hand and you toss all five in the air, flip your hand and catch it on the back of your hand.  Additionally, with two or more people, the other player gets to choose the ‘stone’ that you need to throw up in the air.

 

My informant started playing this game when she was about six, growing up in Singapore during the early sixties. She played this game mainly because it was what girls that age did during that time, the boys played their games and the girls played theirs.

There are variations on the rules depending on what school you went to and who you played with and they are mostly about which hand to play with after the first whole round and the fifth stage. While there are websites and it is documented how to play, most people learn to play from their classmates and their parents.

While this game is relatively old, they still play this game today in schools. Even though it isn’t as widespread as it was in the past. One of the reasons why this game is so popular is due to the fact that it is convenient to carry around and it would not be confiscated by the teachers if they are caught playing in school, unlike video games.

Kings Cup Drinking Game

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 19
Occupation: Software Designer
Residence: Toledo, Ohio
Performance Date: 4/15/11
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 19 year old Filipino female. She lives with her mother in Toledo, Ohio and has one older sister. She was raised Roman Catholic. She is currently a student at a university in Southern California. The informant is the co-president of the club volleyball team at her university.

The informant first learned this game when she started going to parties in sophomore year of high school. She played it for the first time her senior year of high school. Kings Cup is a drinking game played with a deck of cards. The informant would play it at parties, usually towards the middle or end of the night. In her experience, the rules vary from place to place. The rules she learned in Ohio are generally the same everywhere she has played, but certain specifics change. In the game, each card type in the deck has a certain significance, indicating a certain action to be done by the players. The cards are laid out in a circle. Each player draws a card and reveals it to the group and then performs the action indicated by that card. The card is then placed under the tab of a beer can. Eventually the pressure from the cumulating cards causes the beer can to pop open. The person whose card does this has to drink all of the beer. Additionally, if anyone breaks the circle created by the cards, they have to perform a forfeit, designated at the beginning of the game. This is usually something embarrassing, such as streaking. The specific card designations are as follows.

Rules:

Ace: Never have I ever. All players put up three fingers. Each player goes around the circle, saying something they have never done. If one of the other players has done that action they have to put down a finger. This continues until only one person has fingers still up.

2: Red to the head: If the two is red the player who drew the card has to drink two drinks. If the card is black, the player can give out two drinks to any other players to drink, either two to one person or one to two people.

3: The rules are the same as two but with three drinks.

4: Whores: All of the girls playing have to take a drink.

5: To the skies: The last person to put both of their hands in the air has to take a drink.

6: Dicks: All of the guys playing have to take a drink.

7: Social: Every person playing has to take a drink.

8: Abc: The players go around in a circle, each naming something that begins with their letter of the alphabet. The player who drew the card starts with A, the next with B, and one around the circle. The first to mess up has to drink.

9: Rhyme: The person who drew the card says a word or phrase. Each subsequent person in the circle has to say a word that rhymes. The first to mess up has to take a drink.

10: Categories: The person who drew the card picks a category and names something within that category. Each person has to name something in that category, going around the circle. The first to mess up has to take a drink.

Jack: Rule: The person who drew the card makes up a rule, which is in effect for the rest of the game. If anyone breaks this rule they have to take a drink. Examples of rules include no swearing or using names.

Queen: Questions: The person who draws the card looks at someone in the circle and asks them a question. This person should then turn to someone else and ask them a question. It goes around, until someone either answers a question or does not ask a question themselves. That person has to take a drink.

King: Waterfall: Everyone starts drinking at the same time. The person who draws the card chooses when to stop drinking. When they do, the person sitting next to them stops, then the person next to that person, and so on around the circle. In order to determine which direction the waterfall goes, the card drawer asks the two people sitting next to them a generic question. The first one to answer gets to be the second person in the waterfall instead of the last.

Analysis: This game is an excellent example the defining characteristics of folklore: repetition and variation. In the informant’s own experience, she has seen variation in the details of game depending on where and with whom she plays it. Almost every person who plays this game has come into contact with different rules. Perhaps the proximity to alcohol increases the possibility for variation. It is also interesting that this game is an imposition of rules upon an ostensibly disorderly and unruly activity. Perhaps it is the inherent unpredictability of drinking that stimulates the development of a set of rules for action, in the form of a game. While some drink to step outside the bounds of society, the fear that alcohol can push people too far may contribute to the popularity of a game that adds structure to the activity.

Annotation: iPhone Application: King’s Cup. By Bobby Cronkhite Software. 2/25/2011.

Game – Persian – Call to Hafez

Nationality: American, Persian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Persian

Persian Script“Oh, Hafez from Shiraz, you are the keeper of all secrets. By the devotion that you have to your lover, I beseech you to answer my wish.”

Hafez was a Persian poet, and his work has become extremely influential in Persian culture. Although it is authored work, his poems and sayings have become a part of the daily lives of Persian people, becoming almost like folklore. The ways in which his work is now used is particularly striking, and these uses have become folkloric in that they are ritualized and have become traditional. Many Persians will recite the “Call to Hafez” out loud, express a wish or desire, or even ask a question in their mind, and then open to a random page of poetry in the collection, “Odes of Hafez.” The performer will then read the poem and interpret its meaning, which they view as an answer or response to the desire or question they expressed. The informant made it very clear that this tradition has existed for several generations, as she remembers her father doing it with his friends when they lived in Iran. Furthermore, she made it very clear that this tradition cannot be distinguished by social or economic status either, and is a tradition practiced by all kinds of people. I found it particularly interesting when the informant insisted that I perform this tradition and ask Hafez a question. After asking a question and opening to a page, the informant became very excited and read the poem aloud, asking if it provided any insight into the question I asked. After stating that I was unsure, I revealed that I asked Hafez if I would be able to find employment after college. According to her analysis of the poem, my future is optimistic. Her excitement at not only performing this tradition herself, but also in sharing it with me, exemplified its role as a social activity, or game, that is fun and entertaining. It also exemplifies that people of all cultures have long tried to predict their futures and fortunes, often through astrology or entertaining traditions like this one.

Book of poems used: Odes of Hafiz: Poetical Horoscope (translated by Abbas Aryanpur Kashani)

Children’s Game – American

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 41
Occupation: Storyteller
Residence: Westlake, Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 17, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Conversational Spanish, Conversational German

The informant says he “probably learned [the following game] in elementary school or something”:

The game is called “Red Light, Green Light,” and the basic rules are that one player allows the rest to rush forward from a start line when he says, “green light,” and has his back turned, but the other players must stop suddenly if the leader says, “red light,” and turns around, lest they be caught moving and get sent back to the beginning. The first player to reach and touch the leader becomes the next leader. Here are the rules in the informant’s own words: Red Light, Green Light

When asked when the game was usually performed, the informant responded, “I don’t think I played it any time beyond, like, elementary school, or . . . Either during recess or with some friends of mine at, like, a kiddie birthday party—four, five, six, seven, you know, something like that.”

The informant’s opinion of the purpose of the game is that it allows children to “get some of their inherent sneakiness, you know, resolved without getting into any real trouble, ’cause the worst that happens is you get sent back to the beginning of the line.” This might be construed as a useful function, making children more governable the rest of the time; however, the informant thinks the game is more “a subversive game designed to, uh, uh, to effectively teach people that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t get caught.” In his words, the game is “designed to teach you to be sneaky—the idea that if someone’s not looking, you can get away with something.” He concluded by saying, “I’m not sure that, ultimately, the message is all that positive.”

The informant compares “Red Light, Green Light” to other games that might be considered folkloric cognates—“Mother May I” and “Simon Says”—commenting, “There’s a whole sort of series of games that’s about can you follow instructions, can you be sneaky without getting caught.” However, Rae Pica and Mary Duru, authors of the book Great Games for Young Children, have a different concept of what the game is supposed to teach: “listening skills,” “traffic safety skills,” and “self-control” (47), among others. Clearly they endorse the game from an adult standpoint and do not consider it subversive. That the game is included in their book is evidence of multiplicity, and there is a slight variation in their rules for the game:  instead of being sent back to the beginning, children who get caught moving are designated as “yellow lights, which means they must walk in place until the signal to go is given again” (47). And instead of the person who reaches the leader first getting to go next, Rae and Duru recommend a less partial system of deciding an order in advance (47). Clearly the name “Red Light, Green Light” has a terminus post quem of the invention of the stoplight, but the cognate games that the informant mentioned may be older.

Source:

Pica, Rae and Maray Duru. Great Games for Young Children: Over 100 games to develop Self-Confidence, Problem-Solving Skills, and Cooperation. Beltsville, Maryland: Gryphon House, 2006.