Recess

This past summer while in D.C., T. became reacquainted with childhood. An early morning foray into the kitchen for the paper brought her to an abrupt halt, as in the middle of the kitchen floor our hostess and her sister were playing jacks. T. was dragooned into playing, only to discover that the adults in question have been playing jacks, non-stop, since childhood. T., whose mad social skills usually gave her plenty of time to sit alone and read at school during recess, actually had not much of an idea of how to play. She watched the game with the amused detatchment of those who are skill-free.

“Oh, it’s easy,” she was told. “Come play!”

Um, yeah. Right. She tried “onesies,” and never got any further. (Oh, the shame.)

So, fast forward seven months later. A rainy-day mosey past our favorite toy store (They have awesome mobiles on the ceiling, so we must ALWAYS go inside. They also have three dogs – two chocolate Labs and a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy that is just HUGE. At ten months old, it stands as tall as an adult Labrador. Already. Goofy+Huge=Amusing, destructive, and a maker of huge amounts of poo — and fortunately not our problem.) this past weekend netted us a couple of small packets of jacks. They’re probably meant for very small hands, beginner’s jacks, so to speak, thus the jacks are minuscule, and the rules are quite brief. Strangely, the described game is nothing like the game T. played on the kitchen floor in Virginia.

(We were informed later that our hostess plays with “the rules of her folk.” READ: C.T. makes up the rules and then changes them so she can win. ::cough::)

Jacks, dear people, are hard. Ridiculously hard.

T. sputtering: “What? You can’t just throw the ball up?”

D., solemnly reading the rules: Nope. Says here you’ve got to bounce it down once. And you’re supposed to start with them all in your hand and flip your hand over to catch them on the back of your hand.

T., throwing up her hands: “What?! You have to do that at the beginning of every single play? That’s ridiculous.”

D., shrugging: “Well, that’s what it says.”

T., crossly: “I’ve never seen that. We never did that at C’s house. I think the ball is warped. That’s why I can’t do this. Besides, these are just British rules. That means we can just make up our own.”

Somehow, we see now how this happens elsewhere. With other people. In Virginia. Who maybe, ::cough:: cheat…

The pre-game “catch on the back of your hands” sometimes morphs into a full-on contest. Jacks also spin very nicely, which is absorbing in and of itself. And, we throw the ball up, thank-you-very-much. It just doesn’t make sense to do otherwise.

We have two boxes of marbles, by the way. We just have to figure out somewhere to play inside where they won’t all end up under the futon…

Revisiting the culture of childhood, where if nobody likes the rules, it’s perfectly acceptable to the rules and go our own way.

Sounds like a decent life plan.