The Shoe Game

I was reading my favourite blog-esque thingo (I don't know what it is classified as, not being up with online lingo and that) and it inspired me to write this blog about an important part of my life. The blog 'Hyperbole and a Half' is awesomely hilarious all the time, and one of the most recent posts was about playing games in childhood, Allie explaining that she used to play 'Wolves' with her friends. Wolves, it seems, was just like hide and seek, except one person hid and ws sought by the wolves, who then viciously attacked the person in hiding.

My childhood game was absolutey nothing like this. Although there was one involving similar levels of pain, but I'll get to that a little later. First I want to talk about The Shoe Game. This probably best exemplifies me both as a child and now; when I'm bored, I make things up to do with what I have around me and force everyone to join in.

The Shoe Game came about on a day when everyone was too lazy to play chasy (not abnormal) and there were no places to hide for hide and seek. We decided to make our own superior game, which we played for many years to come.

I decided it would centre around shoes. This is because we all had shoes and they were there and so that's what I thought we'd use. That's how my head works, creatively lazy. So we all took off our shoes and put them on the trampoline, which was the place that we held our meetings.

We decided that one person would start of as 'it'. They had to go and hide the shoes around the yard and could freely go anywhere in the yard except for the trampoline which was a safe base. All other people started at the base, and the object of the game was for them to retrieve shoes without being tagged by the 'it' person. The game is won only when the team retrieves all shoes and has no members tagged out.

Here's the illogical twist:

When a person was tagged, they join the team of the 'it' person until their team mates can afford to 'buy' them back - with shoes. Nice, huh?
The 'it' person was allowed to price the caught person at as many shoes as they believed them to be worth in ability (anywhere from 1-4 shoes) and the team could choose whether or not to pay it.

The problem with this game, aside from the impossibility of either team winning (although I shouldn't say that as once the team actually managed to triumph and also once at a declared end time the team had no shoes making 'it' the winner) was that it doesn't work for kids.

Have you ever tried to convince a kid to change teams (in the non sexual preferecney way)? Once in primary school a bunch of kids were forced to change sports teams from Waller (blue) to Sheean (green), named after Collins class submarines in case you were wondering...

Anyway, all of the Waller kids, after complaining non-stop, threw all their events on sports day in an effort to help Waller win. Kids are one-team people. So you can understand that it was super difficult for kids to switch from being part of the team to being 'it' in the shoe game. Not that it really mattered, since the game was stacked a bit in the it persons favour, but it was a bit of a silly concept to put into a children's game.

Similarly, quickly everyone became worth 4 shoes. Once one kid cheats, all kids cheat. And eventually someone does. Hell, honesty rules never work in any way with kids. My sister used to cheat in every game of Monopoly, so I would cheat too. I didn't really need to, I normally won through strategy, but it was the principle of it.

Anyway, despite its flaws, we loved The Shoe Game and played it happily for many years, and I thought memories of such a game should be preserved. To show how much I haven't changed, recently when bored with my cousin over Christmas, he and I decided we would invent a card game. It started out as a simple game of luck; cards were flipped over one by one and whoever flipped over the five of diamonds was the loser (there was no reason for that by the way, I just picked a random card).

It quickly became a very complicated game of luck. Every diamond became worth a particular point value, and points were accumulated until the end of the game (the 5 of diamonds). Later, random cards had arbitrary 'powers' like King's switch (switch your cards with another player) and Eight's mate (tell a mate to do something non game related for you) etc.

There was no logic to it and we only remebered it by writing the rules down. And yet, it wasn't only fun to create, it actually turned out to be absurdly fun to play (for as long as one can play a game with no apparent ability to use strategy). So there you go, the things that work as a kid still work as an adult, I guess.

Oh right, I said I'd tell you about my equivalent games to wolf pack. Well the first that comes to mind is the game 'closet' which I used to play in primary school instead of going to classes. Basically one person is put into a closet, then those blocks that schools have (the ones covered in cloth that are used for drama and such) were piled up against it (all of them) and everyone else sat on the blocks. The person in the closet simply had to try and get out. For the record, I was ace at this game.

The next game was a pool-based game called 'the coil', centred around a large blow-up coil shaped pool toy. There were two teams - usually boys v girls - and one team had to cling to the tube and the other had to get them off. Some people pulled at the other teams fingers or tickled or pinched. Not me, I was a clever child. I held people's heads under water for short bursts, gradually getting longer. Water torture as a child. classic.

Last but not least is a game involving jelly crystals. By now you can probably guess what I called this game. For thos morons out there, I called it The Jelly Crystal Game. This game features a person who lies down and then opens their mouth. Others then pour jelly crystals until a) they cough and reflexively sit up, or b) their mouth overflows. They then have to eat the crystals in their mouth. Photos are a good idea for this game, and while icing sugar is a viable alternative to jelly crystals, it also turns to glue when wet and is far more difficult to clean.

A window into both my childhood and current life right here. Don't pretend you aren't a weirdo to. Most of all...

don't pretend you don't want to play =)