Children’s games
“Slap Slap Draw”
M.D.
Hanover, NH
November 2, 2020
Informant Data:
M.D. was born in New York City, New York on June 28, 1999. Her parents are both lawyers, but her dad was first a trader on Wall Street. Her mother was first a criminal lawyer and now she’s a family lawyer. Her father does business contract law. M.D. grew up in Darien, CT which is a homogenous white, Christian area. M.D.’s mom was adopted from South Korea, so she’s half Korean. She went to Korean culture school growing up, where she learned Korean dance, taekwondo, and language classes. She also went to Hebrew school starting in preschool. She was raised Jewish, but her mother grew up in an Episcopalian household, so she celebrates both Jewish and Christian holidays. M.D. attended public schools for her entire upbringing. M.D. is currently a senior Dartmouth student living off-campus in Hanover, NH.
Contextual Data:
I collected this folklore in my apartment with M.D., who is my current roommate.
M.D. doesn’t have a specific memory of learning Slap Slap Draw. She mentioned that she must have learned this game in a classroom setting, most likely in elementary school. Almost everybody in M.D.’s elementary school classes played this game. She said she would play with people she was at least acquaintances with. Sometimes it would be a class-wide competition, trying to cycle through and beat other people. Both genders would play this game. The game was most popular when M.D. was young, between 2nd grade and 6th grade.
M.D. believes that people play Slap Slap Draw partially for entertainment purposes, because it’s relatively quick and there’s no real way it can last very long. It’s also played for competitive purposes; M.D. said it feels high pressure since there are only two people playing. Further, since you’re predicting what the other person does, tension builds throughout the game and it can be exciting to win.
The context in which M.D. would normally play this game was in breaks during school or during recess. M.D. said Slap Slap Draw was relatively popular among her classmates; it’s an easy game to play while waiting, and was played often by classmates who were particularly competitive.
Item:
Slap Slap Draw is a two-person game in which the two participants are battling one another. The two players face one another. Slap Slap Draw is all about the hand signals that the players use at a particular time. At the same time, the players will slap down on their legs twice and then pick one of three hand movements to perform at each other. The neutral, defensive option is making an X over your chest, crossing your arms. The attack option is shooting finger guns toward the other person. Part of the attack is also reloading your gun, which is putting your hands over your shoulders. You lose if you get shot at but you don’t have an X over your chest. You can only shoot if you’ve reloaded your finger guns. Players typically reload their guns as their first move; your opponent cannot shoot you with an unloaded gun, so you’re guaranteed not to get shot.
Slap Slap Draw is similar to Rock Paper Scissors in the sense that you don’t know what the other player is going to do, but you can guess what they’re going to do based on patterns. If your participant shoots at you but you deflected it, they must reload before they can shoot again. If you suspect that they need to reload, you can attempt to shoot them while they’re reloading. If you just shot, you might want to protect yourself with the defensive option in case your opponent attempts to shoot you.
Florida Huff, Age 21
Dartmouth College
RUSS013
Fall 2020