Hopscotch

Barley, a dog, stands at the start of a chalk hopscotch grid drawn in a parking space.

Had I grown up with family members my age, I suspect that various guardians (parents, teachers, babysitters, etc.) would have taught me some of the “child distraction tech” that has endured across the generations. Surely, “keep the kids busy” must be a major factor motivating instruction in the deeper mysteries of such timeless low-tech games as marbles, four square, jax, and hopscotch. Being on my own, I never encountered the rules in the wild, and the school playgrounds I grew up in were altogether too wild for something requiring this sort of setup and turn-taking. I know, vaguely, that it involves some process of dropping objects to complicate one’s trip across the grid, but that’s about it. So every hopscotch grid I encounter, even now, has the aura of arcane runes established for a ritual that I’ve heard of but never been inducted into. I have chosen, quite deliberately, not to satisfy this curiosity by looking hopscotch variants up on Wikipedia. Beyond my confidence that it’s probably not a Game Of The Year contender, I like the idea of letting some of the ritual mystery of youth remain the purview of the young.