preadolescent "tortures"

[Wilson Gray]

There was the game in which one guy held his hands out palms up and
another guy rested his hands palms down on the first guy's hands. The
idea was that the guy with the quicker reflexes would slap the hands
of the guy with the slower reflexes as hard as he could. This was
actually a mild form of bullying, since the guys good at this didn't
challenge one another. Rather, they challenged only slow-reflexed
chumps, such as your humble correspondent, slapping their hands or,
worse, causing them to flinch for fear of getting their hands slapped,
until they finally caught on that they were always going to lose.
Oddly enough, opting not to accept a challenge to play this  was
considered to be merely good sense and not cowardice. Unfortunately, I
can no longer recall the name of this "game."

-Wilson

On 10/1/06, Grant Barrett <gbarrett at worldnewyork.org> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
> Subject:      Re: preadolescent "tortures"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sep 30, 2006, at 14:07, Peter Farruggio wrote:
> > What about the card game called "nucks" (for "knuckles")?  I forget
> > the content of the game, but after each round the loser had to hold
> > out his fist, knuckle side up, while the winner whacked down on the
> > knuckles several times with the edge of the deck of cards.
>
> We did something like this with those big plastic combs that we
> carried around in our back pockets during the Seventies and Eighties.
> You'd rest the comb on the top of the other person's fist. You'd try
> pick up the comb and smack the fist with it before they could move
> their hand.
>
> There was the "sissy test." You took a pencil eraser to the back of
> your own hand, rubbing it until it bled, just to prove you weren't a
> wuss. I never did this--it was a pretty sorry action by a outsiders
> seeking peer approval.
>
> "Titty twisters" were big, too. Just a big twist of someone else's
> nipple when they weren't expecting it. Guys only, of course, because
> girls' breasts were sacred territory.
>
> Kneeing someone in the crotch was always good for a laugh. "Racking"
> hurt like a mofo.
>
> Also flinching. You'd make like you were going to hit someone, they'd
> shy, duck, or flinch and then you'd have the right to say "one for
> flinching" and hit them as hard as possible on the upper arm.
>
> Grant Barrett
> gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
>
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>


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Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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