What Childhood Folklore Did You Learn As a Kid?
I loved this post by Kelsey Miller for Cup of Jo about “childlore”.
“Remember typing ‘BOOBS’ on a calculator?!” someone will blurt. “Or — or that thing when you’re driving by a cemetery and you have to hold your breath?” I love hearing the tiny differences in details (some people grew up lifting their feet off the floor when passing a graveyard). But what’s wild is how many of us grew up doing, drawing, singing, and believing the exact same funny little things: Miss Susie had a steamboat, Batman smelled, the floor was lava, and stepping on cracks broke our mothers’ backs.
For a definition of childlore, let’s go to the Wikipedia:
Childlore is a folklore or folk culture that focuses specifically on children typically between the ages of 6 and 15. As a branch of folklore, childlore is concerned with those activities which are learned and passed on by children to other children; it excludes the stories and tales told and spread by adults. Childlore can include games, riddles, rhymes, oral stories, codes, fantasies, jokes, and superstitions created by children.
Other than what’s already been mentioned, I can’t remember many specific childlore from my childhood (my recall for such things isn’t great). Perhaps some string games? I can still do cat’s cradle & Jacob’s ladder and taught them to my kids when they were younger. Oh and those cootie catchers.
The commenters at Cup of Jo offered several suggestions: the diarrhea song, padiddle (when you saw a car with only one headlight), and slug bug (or punch buggy). And OMG, I gasped when I read this comment — I used to make these little feet all the time!
Just recently on a field trip with my kids we all traveled in a school bus. We live in Wisconsin so it was chilly in the bus and the bus driver had the heater turned on high. The condensation in the bus was freezing on the inside of the windows as it so often does on a winter morning her and then it’s fun to draw things in the frost. My favorite is to press the side of my fist against the glass to make a little footprint and then use my fingers to make toes. It looks like a baby footprint on the window.
What childlore do you remember from your childhood?
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Yes to little baby feet!
Cool S. Folded paper ninja stars. Paper triangle football. Hyper-regional four-square rules (popcorn, cherry bomb, bobbles). Hand clapping rhymes. Stiff as a board, light as a feather. This is fun!
I loved paper triangle football…that’s another one I passed down to my kids.
I was the den leader in my son’s Cub Scout pack when he was in 2nd grade. I taught the kids how to fold paper footballs as a way to teach them how to fold the flag. At the time, none of the kids had ever done it. I like to think I helped pass on this tradition in some form.
Another lunchroom table game we played was "hockey" using three pennies. You put them in a triangle, and slam your finger down on one, and the other two shoot away. Then you need to flick the first between the two, and continue until you score (and people try to sound like a cheering crowd by waving their open fingers in front of the mouth).
Loved the coin hockey (we used quarters if we had them). Essential rule for our version: you had to play forward, towards the goal. If the coin went backwards, your turn was done. You made a goal by putting your fists together side-by-side, sticking out your pinkies, and resting them on the table.
Iona Opie has a collection of childhood rhymes (illustrated by Maurice Sendak!) that trace this kind of thing way back. It turns out some childhood rhymes are hundreds of years old, passed child to child down through the ages. The annotated collection is called ‘I Saw Esau’ and I buy one whenever I see one. I’ve given many away to parents.
String games are thousands of years old and a human universal! I recommend this podcast ep if you want to learn more: https://manyminds.libsyn.com/string-theories
Clothespin matchstick shooter, tons of gory campfire songs: "My eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school…", "Glory, glory hallelujah, teacher hit me with a ruler…", lots of versions of "on top of old smokey", "Bang, Bang Lulu…"
I remember when a family friend showed me how to make the baby feet and I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.
This was more teenage lore maybe than Childlore but somehow at our first grade seven dance, everyone knew to shout “hey mother fucker get laid get fucked” in the Mony Mony chorus.
Also, “if your hand is bigger than your face you have cancer.” (The victim then gets their hand shoved in their face when they try.)
Or hold your fingers in a circle. If someone looks at it you get to punch them in the arm. Hold it above waist level though and you get punched.
Also the card game “bloody knuckles” where the loser gets the deck of cards smashed on their knuckles.
In retrospect maybe Winnipeg of the 1980s was just kind of a messed up place?
Does “the cool S” count as childlore?
For some reason we didn’t do “punch buggy” but we did yell “woodchuck” and punch each other in the arm when we saw a car with wood panels.
I also immediately thought of “the cool S”.
@the_s_thing on Instagram
My oldest kid is already 19… and I've spotted her still holding her breath when we drive across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Yes! We used to hold our breath when we were crossing the Mississippi.
Maple seed helicopters. Chewing on sour grass and sucking the nectar out of honeysuckle. Making wishes on dandelions. That cheek-flick water-drop sound. Armpit farts. Folding and wearing paper claws. Building towers with playing cards. So many hours of cat's cradle. Starlight, Starbright, first star I see tonight...
Hmm... how to whistle with the cap of an acorn. That yucky thing where you flip your eyelids inside out. Sliding your hands so that it looks like your thumb was cut in half. Hand games like "here's the church, here's the steeple, open up and here's all the people." How to fold a dollar bill to reveal some sort of conspiracy theory.
We whistled using a blade of grass held between the long sides of two thumbs. Never learned the acorn one; must be regional to where acorns grow.
Oh gosh! This reminds me we used to whistle with cupped hands. Put your hands together with a little space between the thumbs, then put your mouth over your thumbs knuckles and blow. Sounded a little like an owl.
What was the name of this game? We played it in Upstate NY in the 70s-80s. It may have been called "Flinch"?
Two players. One player (The Slapper) holds out their hands, palms up. The other player (The Slapee) rests their palms lightly on top of The Slapper's palms. The object, for The Slapper, is to quickly slap the other player's hand (single clap) or hands (quick flipping motion). The object, for The Slapee, is to quickly pull their hand or hands away to avoid the slap and not flinch when The Slapper feints.
I can't remember what we called this, but I know there was a variant called "bloody knuckles" where instead of slapping, both players used their fists. It fucking hurt. (See also snake bites).
Are snake bites like "indian rubs" where you twist the other persons arm skin in opposite directions with your two hands? Ouch.
We called it "Hot Hands" here in north-central Ohio. I remember one time in elementary school in the early 80's we were in the hallway waiting for the bell to go into class and I was the 'Slapee', but I was standing too close to the wall. So when I pulled my hands away real quick, I slammed my left elbow full force into the glazed block wall behind me. I think I can still manifest the pain of that 'funny-bone' thwacking!
I used to play this with my grandmother! We didn't have a name for it. One of us would just hold our palms out expectantly, and the game was on. And she was not someone who would just let a kid win.
A series of hand clapping/slapping games played with a partner, like Pattycake but much more elaborate. Some had sing-songy rhymes that went with them. The one that sticks in my mind start with "Flea. Flea fly. Flea fly floe. Coomalatta commalatta coomalatta vista. Oh no no no no no la vista. Eeny meeny dessameany oo la chawalameany. Exameany solmeany..." and I can only get snippets of that if I chant it from the beginning.
Please tell me someone else has heard of this, because it sounds insane typing it out.
Beat billy oaten doaten bo bo badeaten dotten shhhh
https://www.campfullerarchive.org/songs/flee-fly-flow
Counting Christmas lights while riding in the backseat. I feel like there were a lot of rules, but each kid definitely only got to count the lights on their side of the car. My family has a great story about my Grandma running the car into a ditch because she was turned around looking in the back seat trying to adjudicate. The thing where you put your hand out the window and use it as an airfoil. Folding paper into little darts and then shooting them (at each other) with rubber bands. Not sure if other people had this, but if you burped or farted audibly, you had to name 5 brands of cereal in order not to get hit. Running screaming KIXTRIXCHEERIOSHONEYCOMBFROSTEDFLAKES
If you turn out the lights to make a pitch black room and look in a mirror, Black Aggie would appear. Scared the heck out of us as I can still feel whatever image I thought I saw with my sister and cousin in the basement bathroom when we did it one time.
Had to look it up after reading this article and fun to see that it was a local Baltimore kid thing.
we had the Bloody Mary version - dark bathroom, chant "Blood Mary" three times and she is supposed to appear in the mirror.
Some of my friends were in the "hold your breath" camp when passing a cemetery, and others were in the "lift your feet" camp. However, we ALL seemed to believe, with absolute fear, that if you are in a stopped car to let a funeral procession pass by, you absolutely could not speak - or even make a sound - else the recently deceased would come back to haunt you for disrespecting them.
My elementary school had a bit of childlore that I haven’t heard of anywhere else. We believed that the little bit at the end of a banana (opposite the stem end) was the banana’s “brain” and that it was gross/dangerous to eat it.
I wonder if the kids there now still believe that
We played a version of playground basketball called "21" (or sometimes "New York") where 3 or 5 people could play at the same time. A shot from the field was 2 points, then you went to the line and a free throw was 1 point. First to 21 wins. Of course, defense was a mess. Ironically we played this in Boston. I've seen kids play it in other cities.
We also played a game called Freezedodge — combination freeze tag and dodgeball — but this wasn't childlore because we friggin invented it!
Oh yeah, we played 21 in the midwest. I remember varied rules depending on the court, like sometimes you had to take the ball back beyond the arc and sometimes not. 🤷♂️
As a middle school teacher, the childlore that remains is fascinating (all examples mentioned above ... timeless). But I wonder about the new proliferation of viral teen phenomena? Same sticking power? I can't gift link this Atlantic article, but my students found it eye-opening.
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/11/kids-pass-down-games-rhymes-legends-childlore/672024/
Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/11/kids-pass-down-games-rhymes-legends-childlore/672024/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZ7zilJha89HQFwfgb9M8X1I
Look, I'm not proud of this, but I was recently reminded of the game "Doorknob." Popular among pre-teen and teenage boys in my era, when someone farted, someone within earshot of it could shout "doorknob!" and be given license to pummel the farter until said farter was able to touch any doorknob. The farter could claim immunity if they were able to shout "safety!" before anyone shouted "doorknob." Shouting "safety" before inciting the event was, of course, forbidden.
Taught my kids how to blow on a blade of grass like a horn. Also amazed by the durability and variation of Susie had a Sailboat (none of these are the same as the one I learned)
i grew up a gen-xer in rural north central texas. there was only one elementary school, one intermediate, etc. we had also desgregated by folding two "jim crow" districts into the white district. this doubled the size of the district and created an interesting dynamic among everyone who grew up there. it's not that none of us grew up to be racist assholes but the ones who did also learned how to avoid being seen to be a racist asshole.
anyway, in 5th and 6th grade, at the intermediate campus, we developed a ritual that i have rarely seen duplicated. it revolved around the idiosyncratic use of the word "eyeball" to mean covered in shame. this started midway through the first semester of my 5th grade year, 1974/75(?). i cannot at this remove say how it started but it was adopted quickly by a couple of popular boys which spread it further.
initially this was spoken at conversational pitch when someone had done something embarrassing. by the next year there was an elaborate set of levels. least oppressive was simply touching the corner of one's eye. eventually that gesture would become the cause for fistfights. it went up by degrees until one reached shouting "eyeball! eyeball! you is shamed!" all while vigorously rubbing the cheek below an eye. the ending clause is slurred by shouting into "you shame!"
when some of the kids from my town moved to the next town over the shaming ritual appeared there for a while and then flickered out. other than that, i've not seen anything quite like it. not even in my 23 years teaching 6th grade.
edited for spelling as well as to add a wayward sentence.
Spud
Holding your breath in tunnels. That babies were made by peeing in the same toilet without flushing. Cooties.
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