qz thoughtsSunday Times
Although it has been decades, seeing a Sunday New York Times still brings back memories of a childhood game. I expect this one is not well known, so I thought I'd share it.
My wife likes to read the Times Magazine in paper form, so we get a NYT delivery every Sunday, and only on Sundays.
Young kids play a game called "Duck, Duck, Goose." The rules of the game are pretty simple, I'm sure there are variations from place to place and time to time, but I remember them like this:
‣ Kids sit on the ground, in a circle facing inwards. Somehow one of them is choosen to be "It", possibly by age, or an adult, or a chosing game like "Eeny, Meeny" (see Wikipedia for the verse, we used the "My mother says" variation, and not the one with the racist word).
‣ The It kid walks around the circle, on the outside, touching heads saying "duck" with each one.
‣ Until the It kid says "goose" while touching the head.
‣ Now the It persons runs around the outside of the circle and the Goose has to get up and try to tag them.
‣ If tagged, It is out and sits in the center of the circle. Any previous "out" person is back in the game and rejoins the circle. If It is not tagged, It sits down in the vacant spot from the Goose.
‣ Either way, tagged or not, Goose becomes new It, going around touching heads and saying "duck."
‣ There is no fixed end to the game, it is usually just run until something ends it like lunch or getting tired.
As a teenager, I played a variation on that game which we called "Duck Duck Goose with a Paper Bat." A club would be fashioned from a Sunday New York Times (note that the Sunday paper is the largest of the week, and it used to be a more substantial paper when I played with a stock section, classified ads, and other filler). Basically you roll the paper up in a tapering shape and tape it together to make your club.
‣ Now instead of sitting, people stand with hands behind their back. ‣ The It person walks around and picks someone to hand the club to. ‣ That person then chases It trying to hit them with the club. ‣ There's no "out" in the center, just escaped or smacked. ‣ The club holder becomes the new it when a complete run around the circle has finished. ‣ Game ends when the club is destroyed or time runs out.
The bat is hard to really hurt with, because a too hard hit just destroys it. But it provides enough motivation to race around the outside.