Tag Archives: Game

Star Tipping

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Graduate Student
Residence: Berkeley, CA
Performance Date: 2/24/23
Primary Language: English

Background

My best friend was raised Mormon, and all of the kids at his local Mormon sect would play “star tipping” in the field behind the church at night. He states that he doesn’t remember any significance to the practice, just that it was a game that they played. To star tip, he and the other youth at the church would pick a star in the sky and stare at it while spinning around until they fell. He is a college student, transgender, and of European descent. He left the church when he turned 18.

Text


SS: At the specific church building that we went to, there was a big field in the back and at night after a youth activity, sometimes we’d go out there and do star tipping.

SS: And so you just pick a star. Sometimes it happened to be an airplane, but you pick a star and you look at it and then you spin in circles. Well, it’s still looking at it until you fall over and all the youth would do it.

SS: And I don’t know anything more about it other than it was something that we did.

Analysis

This might just be a simple children’s game, but it is notable for the fact that it was a game shared amongst the entirety of the children among their sect, with a specific name for it. Looking online, there doesn’t seem to be much by way of “star tipping” aside from a few Tumblr posts from an ex-Mormon who mentions it in the tags.

Aside from “entertainment value,” this game may have been encouraged by the church as a way for the youth to connect with each other. Given the celestial cosmology of the Mormon faith, in which those in heaven occupy the “heavens,” this might have been a way to connect a game/practice with Mormon belief. Aside from that, the game may have been a way to pass time in the long, often boring late hours of Mormon seminary.

The Warid Game

MP is a 47 year old Syrian immigrant from Damascus, Syria. She is an accountant and has lived in the U.S. for almost 30 years now. She explains a game that she would play as a little girl with her friends in Syria. She said girls from 1st to 6th grade would play this game and they called it “warid” which is rose in Arabic. 

MP: You stand in a circle with your friends. You can play with two people, but we liked it better when we would play in big groups. So, you and your friends all make a circle and hold hands and you chant “sakir warda” and we would all run into the circle. Then, we chant “iftah warda” and run back to our original spots. It is a very simple game, but we would just have fun holding hands, and chanting, and running together.

Context: This was told to me in an in-person conversation, and I was able to perform it.

Thoughts:

Although it is such a simple game I can see how much fun it would be to 5-12 year old girls. The chant “sakir warda” means close the rose, and the chant “iftah warda” means open the rose. In Syria, gender norms are still heavily adhered to so I could see why this would be such a popular game for little girls, especially around 40 years ago. It is feminine in all aspects and my informant told me it was typically played at school and at parties. 

The Salata Game

MP is a 47 year old Syrian immigrant from Damascus, Syria. She is an accountant and has lived in the U.S. for almost 30 years now. She explains a game that she would play as a little girl with her friends in Syria. She said girls from 1st to 6th grade would play this game and it was called “salata.”

MP: 

One person would start the chant: “Salata, salata, tabal-naha, kushi fiya illa bandora.”

Translation: Salad, salad, we made it, everything is in it except tomatoes.

Then, the next person would reply by chanting: “Bandora fiha, wa kulshi fiha illa khass ma fia.”

Translation: It has tomato in, and everything in it except lettuce is not in it.

And the game would continue with each person chanting about a different vegetable to add to their salad. 

Context: This was told to me in an in-person conversation, and I was able to perform it.

Thoughts:

Although my informant played this in Syria as a little girl, it was also a game that I used to play in America. It was used in my Arabic school to teach us what vegetables are called in Arabic in a fun way. When my informant told me about this game, I was surprised that it was one that I already knew and have played before. This game was played by both boys and girls, however my informant told me that when they would play it in Syria, typically the boys played with the boys and the girls played with the girls. When I would play it years later in my Arabic class, boys and girls all played together. 

Car Game

Main Piece:

Informant: This is my car game that I play every time I drive and also just every day I do this every single day it’s become a way of life for me. And basically, the game is for every Kia Soul that you see it’s one point for every vintage Subaru that you see it’s one point so like things like the ones that have like the split color siding, you know, the old logo, et cetera. Um, and then if you see a Subaru Baja, which is the truck Subaru made from 2000 to 2006. And they discontinued it because it was so unpopular. It’s worth 10 points. And it is minus one point for a cop car minus two points for concrete with their lights on because it’s annoying and ablest and, yeah, and then the other versions that we’ve had that we’ve played is like for every like, quote, liberal, gay, whatever. Sticker it’s plus one and like for every like Trumpy sticker it’s minus one it just really depends on oh yeah, it really depends on where you are though because I feel like it’s a little biased played in Texas because it’s really unfair because you’re in the negatives and that’s no fun. Um, but it only Yeah, so and then my whole thing is like the more points I have, the better of the day I’ll have so it’s an emotional thing and it fucking holds up to I swear. 

Relationship to the Piece: 

This is a game my informant came up with and has taught to all of their friends, which they now play. It has spread around their cohort, taking on a life of it’s own.

Context: 

The informant is one of my friends, a 19-year-old theatre major at the University of Southern California who grew up in Texas. I was told this as we were hanging out in one of the theaters on campus as we were talking about folklore. 

Analysis:

I think it’s interesting how the point system involves what the car is decorated with as well, because the predictors of good or bad days start to make a little more sense. For my informant who grew up in a conservative part of Texas, the bumper stickers were a reminder of the people they lived around who weren’t very accepting, but at the end of the day, it’s about the cars and the points. These indicators might seem silly, but they are a way of external reassurance of your emotional state, I’ve started playing it and I’ve noticed that I almost force myself to have a better day if I’m in the positive, which I feel like has actually helped my mental health because I end up in the positives more often than not. 

Slide (Game)

Text:

“Your hands would slide (Interweave your hands with your friend’s hands and then slide them out and then draw them both towards yourself) and you’d then start doing patty cake [clap your own hands together than then hit your partner’s right hand with your right hand, and then clap your own hands again and repeat with the left hands]. You would start counting each time you and your partner hit hands and skip the number five while counting – 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 etc. and then when you got to 50 you would skip from 49 to 60. If someone said 5 (including 15, 25, 35, etc.) then they were ‘out’.”

Context:

EK is a 19 year old American student at USC. She described a child’s game she remembers playing with her friends while growing up. She was raised in Northern California. 

Interpretation: 

Growing up in Minnesota, we played all sorts of clapping games, but I’d never heard this one. It’s interesting that the “patty cake” hand clapping motion was presented as a given, and while I understood it, I assume other people wouldn’t know what “patty cake” meant, however it might be a more widespread game than “Slide” is. It seems as though this game is a derivation of “patty cake”.  Since it is a bit more complicated than “patty cake”, it would probably be seen as a more ‘mature’ way for older kids to play “patty cake”. Emily Rivas (2020) talks about the “patty cake” hand clapping game and describes it as “the most classic and simple clapping game out there.” Perhaps its simplicity is what has caused it to be generalized to so many other games. If you read the rest of her article “10 classic hand clapping games to teach your kids”, she even describes the hand motions of one of the rhymes/games “Miss Mary Mack” as a derivative of the “patty cake” hand clapping. Even more interesting is there is a game called “Slide” in this article that looks significantly different than the “Slide” described above in both lyrics and hand motions. Nevertheless, “patty cake” has a long history and some debatable origins as a nursery rhyme (Di Donato, 2016), but its proliferation in new derivations of the game is incredibly intriguing. Hand clapping games are great for kids and also very common (in variable forms) in my experience because they can be played anywhere and are easy to learn, while also being competitive, which makes them fun. They are something that gets passed around by kids without anyone really knowing where they came from, and since the informant told me about a game I had never heard of (and I supplied her with games she had never heard of), it is obvious that they their usage varies even across the United States.

Annotations/References:

Di Donato, Jill. “The History of ‘Patty Cake’ Is More Interesting than You’d Think.” Romper, BDG Media, 9 May 2016, www.romper.com/p/the-history-of-patty-cake-is-more-interesting-than-youd-think-10222. 

Rivas, Emily. “10 Classic Hand-Clapping Games to Teach Your Kid.” Today’s Parent, St. Joseph Communications, 8 Sept. 2020, www.todaysparent.com/family/10-classic-hand-clapping-games-to-teach-your-kid/.