By Jerry "Clapso" Avissato
March 20, 2000
SO-203
Professor DR. Ms. Superwoman "Doc" Coleman (Death to Barbie!)
Term of Endearment Paper
First, I hope if nothing else, this doesn't turn into one of those boring and endless term papers. Second, I hope the Nobel Committee somehow gets a copy. I can use the cash. Third, I will be using neither APA nor MLA format. I'll be using DGDAF format. Don't look it up it's my own invention. DGDAF means Don't Give a Damn About Format, the EDFF (English Department Format Fascists) haven't replaced me with one of their pod creatures, ala "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"…YET! I will be using parenthetical notes, but only out of pure spite. I wonder how Cynthia Villanti would grade my hook. I think I know how Jerry Goodman would grade my use of DGDAF. He would use the sixth letter of the alphabet! Well, at least Helen Adsit will get a good giggle out of this.
By now, you are wondering what the hell the title means. First, I'm going to be taking you on a trip down memory lane. Specifically, I'll be writing about the street games we city kids played in Brooklyn when Moses and I were kids. This is a cheap trick I use to avoid doing any research. By relying on my personal memories, I avoid a dozen trips to the library.
The games we played were a wonderful part of the culture of my hometown of Brooklyn, New York. That is the City Games referred to in the title. On hot summer nights, while our parents got plastered sitting on the "Stoop" (the stairs that led to the front doors to our homes) my friends and I would play a bunch of different games. The following is a short list and by no means includes such classics as "roll the junkie", "steal the hubcaps" and the unforgettable "light the bag of dog doo on fire, ring the doorbell and run." I don't want to stretch the bounds of cultural relativism too far, after all.
The Numero Uno, Gamatoohla, Big Kahuna, national pastime of Brooklyn, King of the street games is STICKBALL! On the third day God didn't rest he and the Angels "Choosed Up Sides" for a game of Stickball. The reason Satan fell was because his team beat Gods team in the third day Stickball game.
You need four things to play stickball. First, a stick, (a broom handle with the straw part broken off is the best, but don't let mom catch you.) Second, a little rubber ball called a "Spauldine." Third, a group of adolescent and/or pre-adolescent kids willing to play. Last and most important you need a street.
Not just any street will do. It must have "sewers" which are better known as manhole covers. These are very important because one manhole cover is home plate and the next is second base. Midway between the two sewers and across the street from each other first and third bases are drawn with chalk. The batter drops the "Spauldine" and whacks it with the stick. The rest is like baseball with one exception. The number of sewers you hit is a gauge of your status in the stickball world. The number of sewers you hit is how many manholes from the home plate manhole the ball flew before hitting the ground. I was a five-sewer man. That put me in good stead. When sides where chosen I always went in the second round. We had two, six-sewer men on my block. They always were picked first.
Another game we played was Ringalivio. That was "my" game. I was the undisputed champ of Ringalivio on my block. Whichever team had me on it always won. Where Stickball was a game measured in sewer-status, Ringalivio was a game of domination and conquest. We learned how to "War" (compete) from Ringalivio. The idea was to capture all the members of the opposing team. The only way team members that were captured could be freed was when a free member of the same team entered the area designated the "jail" of the opposing team. This is why my team always won. I was never captured and I would wait till all my team mates where in jail. I would then enter the jail area and free them, which would totally deflate the chances of the other team. Now tired from chasing me around, the other team would usually give up at that point. Emmett Grogan wrote an excellent book called "Ringalivio", hope you will read it someday.
Since we weren't rich, we didn't play "Rich games" such as Golf or Tennis. We had our own street versions of these games. Handball was our version of Tennis; two or more players take turns slapping a Spauldine against a wall. The scoring was just like Tennis. Our version of Golf was called "Skelsies". A large box was drawn in chalk on the street, 18 smaller boxes where drawn to represent holes. Water and sand traps were drawn, and bottle caps filled with wax were used as "golf balls". From Skelsies and Handball, we learned about class. We were working class so couldn't play the "real" versions of Tennis and Golf. Having now played both tennis and golf as an adult, I would still rather play Skelsies and Handball.
As I hope you can now see, I am attempting to make a connection between the games we played (culture) and our socialization. I am analyzing from my own perspective, and will not bother citing research by others. I am concentrating on what we learned, not on the sociological theories concerning acculturation and socialization. In any case, anyone who has taken Soc 101 should be well grounded in these concepts by now.
While Street Games are still played in Brooklyn and other lesser cities, today's youth tend to play Video games and "Customizable Card Games" (CCG) such as "Magic: The Gathering" and "Pokemon". These games, although devoid of the physical dimension our street games employed still teach the three lessons I attributed to the street games, Status, competition, and class.
Status in the Video game world comes from getting the hot new game and playing it for hours, again and again, until you reach a high level of ability. Since the game cartridges cost around $75 each it's easy to see that children from upper economic classed families have an advantage in gaining such status. This disparity between rich and poor is even more apparent in the CCG's. The sales strategy of the makers of these games is interesting. In every pack of 15 cards, one card is "rare". The rare cards are of the most use in the game. Of these rare cards the most rare is called a Black Lotus. This is one of the most powerful cards in the game. Since players create their own decks, having the rare, and more powerful, cards in your deck can almost guarantee you beat the competition. There is a commodities type market that has sprung up in which the rare cards can be bought. I have it on good authority (my 15-year-old son) that a black lotus card fetches $400 among players of this game. Again, it should be easy to see that the children of the higher economic classes are at a great advantage in this game. If you have more money to spend on cards, you win more.
There are small shops in every city in which young people between the ages of eight and twelve play "Pokemon". Older kids will play "Magic: The Gathering" and "Starwars". I have visited such a local shop and have seen the kids play. The lessons of status, competition and class are easily seen in action in such places. On one such visit I witnessed a 12-year-old dressed in a $300 Bennaton sweat suit and $200 Nikes, beat a 17-year-old in jeans and T-shirt. The father of the 12-year-old patted him on the back and told him what a great player he was as they got into their brand new luxury car. When asked if he ever played the 12-year-old before the 17-year-old said he had. When asked if he ever beat the 12-year old the 17-year-old replied, "He has a $2000 deck, he comes in every Saturday and beats me." When asked why he bothers to play him and lose every Saturday the 17-year-old replied "Someday I'll beat him and that will prove how great a player I am." Hope springs eternal…
There has been a movement away from the old model of my youth in which the lower class played a certain KIND of game, which was different from the upper class. That model has been replaced by all classes playing the same games, with the upper classes having an advantage. Still, somehow I seem to be the only person that sees these types of things as unfair. Like the 17-year-old mentioned above many people seem to hope that somehow they will hit the jackpot, and rise above the stacked odds. This is the reason state lottery games stay in business, and many people stay at low paying jobs they hate.
I do have one place where a game is played and the way the game is set up removes much of the unfairness I attribute to the three lessons of status, competition, and class. This place is the "game cities" I mentioned in the title. This place is actually a collection of places called MUD's (Multi-user-domains). My fave MUD these days is called EOD. I can't remember what EOD stands for but you get there on the Internet by pointing your browser to: telnet:eod.betterbox.net. Once there you decide what you want to be called, what your password will be, then follow the instructions on how to create a character. Once you create a character, you can return whenever you like to play. Now here's one of the good parts, IT'S FREE!
Yes, I said free. There is very little the rich can do to gain an advantage in a game that's free, so the disadvantage of class disappears. Since no one can see you your age, race, sex or other RL (real life) attributes mean nothing. You are whomever you decide to be. Competition is present in the form of gaining EXP (experience points) but unless you chose to do so there is no head to head player competition.
Status comes from gaining levels. When you first create a character on a MUD, you are level one. The number of levels you can achieve depends on the MUD. On EOD, there are 101 levels you can gain by gaining EXP and another nine you can gain by impressing the IMMS (Immortals). The immortals are all volunteers. No one gets paid for running a MUD.
There is, unlike the rest of the Internet, no advertising on MUD's. Anyone can open his or her own MUD. The software can be downloaded free from several places on the net. For about $30 a month anyone can rent a site on the net to run a MUD on. All you have to do is put in some time to learn a computer language called C++ and you are running a MUD. Then you can write your own areas, and "hire" your friends as immortals.
One last thing about MUD, don't go on one expecting a video game. There are no graphics (pictures) on MUD's. MUD's are text based. They require you to read and write. It helps to have a vivid imagination and the ability to think fast. They are the most "literate" of games. Therefore, as I feel I have rambled on enough to get a "C" on this paper, I have one last thing to include for Professor Hoffman, Ch Ch Ch CHIA!
Read, Think, Speak, Write, Be!