Talking to my sister, we were remembering the clapping games we used to play as kids. This was mostly in the country school, now that I think of it I don’t think they were played in the town school as much. Though that could also have been because we were older when we went there. But you know those games kids play where you have to clap a sequence while saying a rhyme? Sometimes individually, often in pairs, and then there were group games?
This would have been small town Ireland in the 90s, but the ones I remember …
'Double Double' was a really easy one for pairs. “Double double this this, double double that that, double this double that, double double this that!” You stand facing each other, and on ‘double’ you bring both fists to their fists, on ‘this’ you bring palms to palms, and on ‘that’ you bring the backs of your hands to the backs of their hands. The aim is to repeat the sequence, getting faster all the time, until somebody messes up. It was fun because you started out raising both fists at each other for ‘double double’, like you’re about to start a fist fight (which was not unknown to happen).
Then there’s ‘Under the Bam Bush’, again for pairs. I can’t remember the clap sequence for this one. I can remember most of the rhyme and the rhythm: “Under the bam bush, under the sea, boom boom boom. True love for you my darling, true love for me. When we get married, we shall have a family. A boy for you, a girl for me, how many fishes in the sea? Twelve and twelve is twenty four, kick the teacher out the door. If she knocks, give her a box, and then she’ll have the chicken pox!” I know it had a more complicated sequence, cross claps and over-unders, but I can’t for the life of me remember how it went.
We also had ‘Miss Mary Mack’, which had you alternating clapping your own hands and double high fiving your partner, and then when words repeated you repeated the high fives. “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, All dressed in black, black black, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down her back, back back …”
And, when you had a LOT of people together, there was always ‘Concentration’. Basically, everyone in the group got a number, one to seven or twelve or however many you had. The rhythm was two claps of your hands, two claps on your thighs, rinse and repeat, and everyone kept up this rhythm. You spoke on the hand claps, the thigh claps gave the next person time to prepare. “Concentration! (beat beat) Are you ready? (beat beat) If so! (beat beat) Let’s go! (beat beat) One to six! (beat beat) Six to three! (beat beat)” etc. It started with person one, and on your handclapped beats, you called out who had to pick up after you. They had the thigh beats to get ready, and then on their turn they had to call out a different number. People were eliminated if they didn’t answer to their number or didn’t call out a viable number on their turn. So as you went you had to keep track of which numbers were still in the game, and be ready to call them out the instant your turn came.
Concentration’s really only good if you have a big group. Like, minimum of five/six, but honestly you wanted around ten to fourteen for a proper game. It gets really boring when it’s just ‘One to two!’ ‘Two to one!’ ad nauseum at the end.
I always wonder if these are still going. They are a lot of fun.
