Children’s games
“Slaps”
G.H.
Pawtucket, RI
November 2020
Informant Data:
G.H. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 9, 1997. He lived there for 18 years before going to college in Boston. He now lives in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. G.H.’s dad is the CEO of the Fulton County Education Foundation, and his mom is the financial director for the Samaritan Education Foundation in Atlanta. G.H. started preschool at his church below school age. After that, he was in private schools all the way through high school, which he said is not unusual for kids from Atlanta because the city has so many private schools. He attended a private elementary school for 9 years, and then between 7th and 12th grade he was at a different private school. He then attended Berklee College of Music.
Contextual Data:
I collected this folklore virtually over Zoom with G.H., who is my older brother.
G.H. said that Slaps is a simple game that takes a very little amount of time, and there isn’t a score. Since it’s extremely easy and simple, people can play it in virtually any setting.
G.H. remembers playing Slaps at school a bit, but the most he remembers playing was with his cousins and other family members of a similar age. He also played this game at summer camp a lot because of the roughhousing he was involved in with his camp friends. G.H. said Slaps is one of the more violent casual games that you can play, so for that reason he probably didn’t play it in school as much.
According to G.H., boys are more likely to play Slaps. Environments in which children are roughhousing or messing around, which are typically male-dominated environments, are the settings in which Slaps is played. It’s a violent game, it hurts, it requires fast reflexes, and it values not flinching, which are all characteristics that fit within male gender roles. G.H. said children between the ages of 5 and 12 are more likely to play Slaps, but he also played with adults occasionally, so there’s no age group that Slaps is limited to.
G.H. has a very early memory of learning this game from either his aunt’s first husband or her next boyfriend. Both of them are men, and the context was a roughhousing situation in which they were messing around, which is the environment in which a game like Slaps would be played.
Playing Slaps with girls didn’t change the dynamic of the game for G.H. at all, but he only played it with his sister (me) and his female cousin, and it was still in a familiar and roughhousing context. He emphasized that the most important aspects are the game are toughness, reflexes, and physical superiority.
Item:
There are two players. One of them holds their hands out with their palms facing up. The other person holds their hands out on top of the other person’s hands with their palms facing down. The person on the bottom has to slap the person whose hands are on the top with their hands. If the person on the bottom swings and misses, they move to the top. The goal is to be on the bottom, because dodging is harder than hitting. If you swing and miss, you move to the top, and that’s the non-desirable spot.
You can feel the person on the bottom move their hands quickly, so you can dodge and move your hands out of the way if you have quick reflexes. There are some forms of mind games involved because the person at the bottom can either flip both hands, flip one hand, or flip one hand directly across. The option going across is much harder, but it hurts more for the opponent. In one form of the game, if the person on the top flinches and moves their hands if the bottom person wasn’t actually slapping, the slapper gets a free slap.
Florida Huff, Age 21
Dartmouth College
RUSS013
Fall 2020