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| 1 - 2 - 3 "Not It!" |
You know what we need? I'll tell you what we need: We need Life Ghoul.
Remember when you were a kid and you'd play Hide and Seek, or Tag, or Kick the Can, or any other backyard game? There was always that safe spot where you could go and the kid who was "it" couldn't touch you. Some neighborhoods simply called it "Safe;" but other neighborhoods, like my neighborhood, called it "Ghoul." Don't ask me why we named the safe spot in a friendly game of Tag after dead people who continue to walk the earth, but that's what we called it in our neighborhood.
"No fair! I'm on Ghoul!" or "I was safe! I was on Ghoul when you tagged me!" were all statements made by us as kids that made perfect sense at the time. To say them now would get some weird looks but back then it made sense.
Selecting where Ghoul was gonna be was one of the many preparatory stages of any backyard game.
First you had to decide which game you all wanted to play;
Second you had to decide who was gonna be "it."
"It" could be decided any number of ways. The simplest was, at the count of three, to simply yell "not it!"
"1 - 2 - 3 - Not It!!!"
The last person's voice to be heard was automatically "it." This was sometimes difficult, because it usually turned into an argument, ala, "I said it first!" "No I said it first!" etc.
A more fair way to pick who was "it" was to "put your feet in." This required every kid to huddle around and put their toes together in a kind of circle-of-shoes, and one person would recite a little poem while tapping their finger on each shoe at each syllable...
"Blue - shoe - blue - shoe - how - old - are - you?" And the kid whose toe the poem stopped on had to give their age: "Six!" Then the counting on the toes continued... "1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - and - out - you - go..." Sometimes the longer version would be used: "O - U - T - spells - out - and - out - you - go..." Again, this depended on which neighborhood you were from.
(Remember how weird it felt going to a friend's house across town and finding out they play all these games differently?)
Another "put your feet in" poem was this one:
Bubble gum bubble gum in a dish;
How many pieces do you wish?
And then there was the elaborate:
My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes;
My mother socked your mother right smack in the nose;
What color was the blood?
Then, instead of a number, the shoe stopped-on had to name a color: "Red"
"R - E - D - spells - red - and - out - you - go..."
These were all examples of process-of-elimination picking. The last one OUT was "it." But there was one poem that was more direct, not process-of-elimination, and it wasn't used very often, at least not in my neighborhood. It went:
Dip, dip, dip,
My little ship,
Sails on the ocean
You are it!
Short and sweet, it picked "it" quickly and without repeat recitations. You'd only ever use that version if you didn't have much time to play, like if the streetlights were coming on and you wanted to squeeze in one more game.
Anyway, after you picked who was gonna be "it" you still weren't ready to start the game. You still had to decide on Ghoul. Where was Ghoul gonna be? It had to be a centralized landmark that everybody could get at. Sometimes it was the picnic table, if you had a picnic table in the backyard. (Or as Chucky from my neighborhood used to call it, the pick-inick table.) Sometimes Ghoul would be the clothesline pole, or the stoop on the back porch. (That was Chucky also.) (Heh-heh.) (Just kidding Chucky.) (Everyone knows I was the stoop.)
Anyway, Ghoul.
It was called Ghoul.
And that's what we need nowadays, as grown-ups. A place we can call Ghoul. A place we can go to when the pressures of everyday life get to be too much for us. Like if we feel overly stressed at work, we can go to Life Ghoul for a few hours and unwind. Or Existential Ghoul if your problems are more abstract. Meaning of life got you down? You better go sit at Existential Ghoul for a few days!
Everyone should be allowed one hour at Life Ghoul per day.
If your ex-wife's lawyer is after you because you're behind in child support, when you see him coming, you hop in the car and drive over to your nearest Life Ghoul location. He can't bother you there! "I'm sorry, Mr. Lawyer, I'd like to help you, but I'm on Ghoul..."
It would, of course, have to be determined where Life Ghoul would be. In your town, in your county... Perhaps it could be voted on during local elections or town hall meetings: "Those in favor of Life Ghoul being the little foot bridge over the creek in Sinnissippi Park, say 'aye'..." Like that.
And there'd have to be rules. Otherwise you'd have bums hanging around Life Ghoul all day every day. There would have to be posted a list of "Non-Fairs." Like:
No fair spending more than two hours on Life Ghoul at a time;
No fair leaving Life Ghoul and hopping right back on again for another two hours; twenty-four hours must pass between each visit to Life Ghoul;
No fair evading the Police on Life Ghoul;
No fair pushing somebody off Life Ghoul into an angry mob awaiting...
And like that.
I'd have to give it more thought, obviously, but that's what I come up with so far. It's just an idea-in-the-rough. Life Ghoul. (And it's copyrighted, too, so don't go stealing my idea and doing a sketch about it on Saturday Night Live or anything like that. I've got the notarized paperwork with me, and it has that little circle 'c' above it, so, it's official...)
Anyway, that is all.
And -- as ever -- thank you for blogging at Bleggah!
