Did you play Punch-Buggy as a kid? On a message board I frequent, everyone knew the game but the exact thing you said/what you did varied. We played it as the first one to spot a VW said, "[Colour] punch-buggy, no punch-backs!" while hitting the other player(s) on the arm. Only old VW Beetles count, not the new ones, and you could also say "punch-bus" if it was an old VW bus. Of the message board folk, some followed that with "two for flinching!" if the victim shrunk away from your punch. I'd heard of 'two for flinching' but not as a part of Punch-Buggy, just a separate thing that kids, mostly the boys, did to one another. Others played it as "Slug-bug!" or "slug-a-bug", with or without calling the colour. If you were in a benevolent mood, you could wipe the hit off your victim, but in a truly cut-throat game of Punch-Buggy, they could either suffer or wipe it off themselves. I think the 'punch-back' portion of the game had to do with calling the wrong colour, but I don't remember exactly.
Then there was "Jinx", which was very important. Whenever you and a friend said the exact same thing in unison, you called "jinx!" on them and they couldn't speak until someone said their name. Did jinx involve counting rapidly to ten, having to include the words 'black magic' or just jinxing them? I just jinxed them while pointing at them with both hands, first two fingers crossed. If the jinxed person spoke before someone said their name, you got to hit them.
Alan and I were talking about this, and he remembered Punch-Buggy and Jinx the same way, but he'd never heard of "Pinch, poke, owe me a Coke!" That was just something you said at random times for no reason to a friend, matching the words to the action. I have no idea what the point of this game was, because we never collected or paid off on the owed Cokes. Just a chance to hit someone, I guess.
Since I was a girly-girl, far too prissy to run around and get dirty, the big thing when I was in elementary school was hand-clapping games, many of which were very complex in the alternating hands and various moves. I was very fast at one, and I was trying to remember the rhyme last night. I remembered that each line ended with something dirty (that is, 'dirty' in the 3rd or 4th grade sense of the word) which was negated by the next line, like "...went to HELL!--O operator, give me number nine!" By this morning, I had remembered that it was a steamboat, and the steamboat had a bell, [someone] went to heaven and the steamboat went to hell." This was enough for Google success, and after looking at several versions of the rhyme, the one that most closely resembles my recollection is:
Miss Lucy had a steamboat,
The steamboat had a bell,
Miss Lucy went to heaven
And the steamboat went to...
Hello operator
Please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I'll kick your big...
Behind the 'fridgerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And she cut her little...
Ass-k me no more questions
I'll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Pulling down their...
Flies are in the meadow
The bees are in the park
Miss Lucy and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the dark!
D-A-R-K!
Spelling out 'dark' was usually followed by a 'whooo!' if you'd made it all the way to the end without messing up. The other one I remembered had to do with a baby in a bathtub, which seems to most closely match:
Miss Susie had a baby, she named him Tiny Tim,
She put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim,
He drank up all the water, he ate up all the soap,
He tried to swallow the bathtub, but it wouldn't go down his throat
Miss Susie called the doctor, Miss Susie tried the nurse,
Miss Susie called the lady with the alligator purse,
Mumps said the doctor, measles said the nurse,
Nothing said the lady with the alligator purse,
Miss Susie kicked the doctor, Miss Susie hit the nurse,
Miss Susie paid the lady with the alligator purse!
The thing I remember most clearly is how seriously my friends and I took these things. The rules were VERY IMPORTANT and were not to be defied. Someone might pass a note in class or take candy without asking or sass back to a parent, but under no circumstances could you, would you, ever dare to (for example) speak if you were under a Jinx.
Did you play Punch-Buggy or Jinx as a kid? I have to confess that it's not unusual for my mom and I to engage in a SERIOUS game of Punch-Buggy still today. Do you remember the steamboat rhyme? What other silly things did you do?
Then there was "Jinx", which was very important. Whenever you and a friend said the exact same thing in unison, you called "jinx!" on them and they couldn't speak until someone said their name. Did jinx involve counting rapidly to ten, having to include the words 'black magic' or just jinxing them? I just jinxed them while pointing at them with both hands, first two fingers crossed. If the jinxed person spoke before someone said their name, you got to hit them.
Alan and I were talking about this, and he remembered Punch-Buggy and Jinx the same way, but he'd never heard of "Pinch, poke, owe me a Coke!" That was just something you said at random times for no reason to a friend, matching the words to the action. I have no idea what the point of this game was, because we never collected or paid off on the owed Cokes. Just a chance to hit someone, I guess.
Since I was a girly-girl, far too prissy to run around and get dirty, the big thing when I was in elementary school was hand-clapping games, many of which were very complex in the alternating hands and various moves. I was very fast at one, and I was trying to remember the rhyme last night. I remembered that each line ended with something dirty (that is, 'dirty' in the 3rd or 4th grade sense of the word) which was negated by the next line, like "...went to HELL!--O operator, give me number nine!" By this morning, I had remembered that it was a steamboat, and the steamboat had a bell, [someone] went to heaven and the steamboat went to hell." This was enough for Google success, and after looking at several versions of the rhyme, the one that most closely resembles my recollection is:
Miss Lucy had a steamboat,
The steamboat had a bell,
Miss Lucy went to heaven
And the steamboat went to...
Hello operator
Please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I'll kick your big...
Behind the 'fridgerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And she cut her little...
Ass-k me no more questions
I'll tell you no more lies
The boys are in the bathroom
Pulling down their...
Flies are in the meadow
The bees are in the park
Miss Lucy and her boyfriend
Are kissing in the dark!
D-A-R-K!
Spelling out 'dark' was usually followed by a 'whooo!' if you'd made it all the way to the end without messing up. The other one I remembered had to do with a baby in a bathtub, which seems to most closely match:
Miss Susie had a baby, she named him Tiny Tim,
She put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim,
He drank up all the water, he ate up all the soap,
He tried to swallow the bathtub, but it wouldn't go down his throat
Miss Susie called the doctor, Miss Susie tried the nurse,
Miss Susie called the lady with the alligator purse,
Mumps said the doctor, measles said the nurse,
Nothing said the lady with the alligator purse,
Miss Susie kicked the doctor, Miss Susie hit the nurse,
Miss Susie paid the lady with the alligator purse!
The thing I remember most clearly is how seriously my friends and I took these things. The rules were VERY IMPORTANT and were not to be defied. Someone might pass a note in class or take candy without asking or sass back to a parent, but under no circumstances could you, would you, ever dare to (for example) speak if you were under a Jinx.
Did you play Punch-Buggy or Jinx as a kid? I have to confess that it's not unusual for my mom and I to engage in a SERIOUS game of Punch-Buggy still today. Do you remember the steamboat rhyme? What other silly things did you do?
9 Comments:
We played punch bug pretty much like you describe (but no punch bus -- that's a new one to me), and jinxed each other for saying the same thing (just the word, no counting or anything) and I've heard those rhymes before... I think people used to skip to them... but I don't remember the rules being taken as seriously as you seem to have taken them.
By
Still Trying, at 3:05 PM
Your 'hand clapping' rhymes were our 'jump rope' rhymes - pretty much.
We used to have a thing we said when walking together if you had to split for a tree, telephone pole, etc - 'bread and butter and no bad luck on my side'. I don't know why or where it came from.
Yeah....my left shoulder is pretty much gone from the HelSter's expertise at Punch-Bug.....
mom
By
Anonymous, at 3:21 PM
The jump-rope rhymes I remember all ended in counting, so you could see how well you did. Like:
Cinderella, dressed in yellow
Went uptown to meet her fellow
Made a mistake, kissed a snake,
How many doctors did it take?
1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
and
Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish!
How many pieces do you wish?
1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
By
Helly, at 4:02 PM
Oh my goodness, I hated Punch Buggy and Jinx. I was so bad at it and always ended up with bruised arms or really mean people who wouldn't un-jinx me.
I was even worse at those rhyming things. I could never remember the words.
By
A Margarita, at 7:47 PM
We played Slug Bug and so do my kids so I play along with them. They started a version for PT Cruisers called PT Punch. The last time we went to White Sands there was some sort of PT Cruiser convention with dozens of them lined up. LOL... They couldn't punch each other fast enough.
I do a version of the baby in a bathtub with Echo:
I had a little baby,
I named him Echo Chance,
I put him in the bathtub
to see if he would dance,
He drank up all the water,
he ate up all the soap,
And woke up in the morning
With a bubble in his throat!
Bloop, bloop!
And with the 'bloop, bloop' I tickle him under his chin.
By
Kristal, at 7:21 AM
Aw, Kristy, that's SO CUTE!!!
By
Helly, at 8:07 AM
As an only child, I was deprived of the "punch buggy" experience. However, I got and gave cootie shots "circle circle dot dot dot (WHACK!), now you have a cootie shot."
I was heavily into the handclap games in elementary school. I still remember one that didn't even have a rhyme, just a whole bunch of complicated moves. Thanks for the words to Hello Operator - I've been stuck for years on a couple of those lines!
The earliest handclap rhyme I remember has words something like this, sung to a repetitive Aladdin's-lamp sounding tune:
The girls in France
Do the hula hula dance
And the way shake
It's enough to kill a snake
When the snake is dead
They put roses on their head
When the roses die
They put diamonds in their eyes
When the diamonds break
It turns to 1968
Then there was this poem we used to just SAY because it was SO FUNNY:
Admission's free, pay at the door
Pull up a chair and sit on the floor
One bright morning
In the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to have a fight
Back to back, they faced each other
Pulled out knives and shot each other
-I forget how that one ends.
Song fragments:
"I'm popeye the sailor man
I live in a garbage can
I eat all the worms
And I spit out the germs
I'm popeye the sailor man"
"Great green gobs of
Greasy, grimy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat
Chopped up baby parakeet"
"Here comes the bride,
40 feet wide
Look how she waddles from side to side"
"This land is my land
And it ain't yer land
I got a shotgun
And you ain't got one
If you don't get off
I'll blow your head off
This land is private property"
For jumping rope:
"Bathing beauty thinks she's a cutie
All she wears is a bathing suitie
If you jump to 24
You can have a turn once more"
"Teddy bear teddy bear turn around
Teddy bear teddy bear touch the ground
Teddy bear teddy bear read the news
Teddy bear teddy bear tie your shoes
Teddy bear teddy bear go upstairs
Teddy bear teddy bear say your prayers
Teddy bear teddy bear turn out the light
Teddy bear teddy bear say good night."
Did you play kickball or softball or some other ballgame with bases using ghost men? I used to play that a lot with my neighbors, and sometimes we'd only have 3 or 4 people, so we'd have to keep track of whole teams of ghosts.
Boys played "Smear the Queer" and I never knew exactly what that was, but it looked like it involved hurting people so I stayed clear. I remember teachers telling kids not to play it, that it was a mean game. At the time that I remember people playing it, I didn't know "queer" meant "gay." So I'm not sure it had that connotation in the game.
Frog baseball - that was real. Sharp gender division on this one. Girls were across the board horrified.
I was surfing the other day and ran across this site, on street games around the word:
http://www.streetplay.com/
By
Anonymous Me, at 11:26 AM
Wow, Nancy - thanks for the great comment! I loved singing 'greasy grimy gopher guts' and the one about the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, they eat your guts and they spit them out'. :-)
By
Helly, at 11:36 AM
They crawl in your stomach and out your snout!
I find kid culture really fascinating. To find kids now doing the same things I did as a child, the stupid, silly things that teachers aren't going to teach them - how do they learn it? How does it get passed down from generation to generation?
From my college roommate who had many siblings, I learned:
What time is it?
Half past a monkey's ass, quarter past his balls.
By
Anonymous Me, at 7:41 AM
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