Hopscotch

“Hey Becky, what are you and Liz playing?” I asked.

“Hey Uncle Ben! Liz and I are playing a new game we cam up with!” my little niece squealed. “You wanna play?”

“Sure,” I squat down to her height, “how do you play?’

“Okay, so, here are the rules.” She looked back at Liz to make sure she was ready to chip in if she messed up. “So, it’s pretty much hopscotch, but if you step on a line, instead of having to go back to the beginning, you instead to play Bo Bo Skee Watan-Tatan with the other person playing, and then whoever loses needs to run across the lawn three times, but you need to remember to hop every time you touch the drive way. If you forget to hop, then you need to run in circles for 30 seconds. We use my new watch to count it! And then when you’re done running in circles…”

“Wait,” I ask, “do you need to run in circles?”

“No,” she pffts at me, “only if you forget to hop!”

“Oh, right…” I hit myself in the head, as to say, “duh.”

“Anyway,” she says in an exagerated tone, “once you’re done running in circles, you need to try pick three of those dandolions and blow them and make three different wishes. If you make the same wish twice, then you need to swing for ten seconds, jump off the swing at the highest point and then go down the slide, but if you remember to wish three different wishes then you can come back and play tic tac toe with the other girl. If you win tic tac toe, then you can play Bo Bo Skee Watan-Tatan to try to win so that you won’t have to run accross the lawn again three times, hopping at the driveway, otherwise, if you lose, then you need to run around the house twice while singing Mary Has a Little Lamb while you act like a monkey. Once you finish with that then you can return to the slide, but you need to run up the slide and then climb down the stairs backwards before being able to play tic tac toe again. Once you win tic tac toe, then you can go back to the hula hoops!”

“Hula hoops?” I asked. I could of sworn I hadn’t heard anything about hula hoops before.

“Yeah, hula hoops!”

“When did you mention hula hoops before?”

“After Bo Bo Skee Watan-Tatan Uncle Ben!” she cracked up. She and Liz began rolling on the ground in laughter at my expense. 

Once they were done, Liz continued the rules. “So then, when you get back to the hula hoops, you need to hula hoop while walking the hopscotch court backward. If you can’t do it, then you need to go to the jump rope!” She pointed to the jump rope tied to the baskbetball net.

“Then,” Becky continued, “you need to jump the whole Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear song…”

“What’s that?”

They both gasped. I mean, they actually gasped… “Uncle Ben!” Becky exclaimed, while grabbing hold of my arm, “you don’t know Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear?”

“Um… sorry?”

“Oh, Liz…” Becky sighed.

“Do you want to teach me?”

“Okay Uncle Ben, but we’ll have to do it quick so we can finish the rules for our game!”
“Okay,” I smiled, “I learn quick!”

The next ten minutes I think I spent trying to get a hang of Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear before they finally said that I was good, but I knew I wasn’t. I couldn’t believe my own niece was mocking me.

“So,” shouted Becky, “after playing Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, you need to go back to the swings and swing while laying down before you can come back and try to hula hoop again, but this time forward on the hopscotch court, and if you can’t do it again, then you need to run inside and get a two glasses of lemonade from the fridge. After lemonade, then you can play tic tac toe again to try and win. Once you win tic tac toe, then you run backwards around the house singing Miss Mary Mack (which I have no idea what that is, but I wasn’t going to interrupt her again) while acting like a fish. Then you come back and play one more Bo Bo Skee Watan-Tatan before you can run back and forth across the lawn three times but don’t hop when you touch the driveway, instead you wiggle when you touch the fence. And then after that you blow three more wishes with the dandolions, but they all need to be the same ones, and then you run in circles for thirty seconds, and then you try to jump through the whole hopscotch and pick up the pebble on the way back! You see Uncle Ben?!”

“Yeah… I think I got it…” I lied. 

I figured I’d just play hopscotch and not touch the line and that’d be that. I can jump hopscotch. Sadly, I messed up. The next twenty to thirty minutes were probably some of the most confusing and difficult of my life. I’ve gone through college and graduate school, and in comparison to this game, that was a cake walk. Liz and Becky would occassionally take breaks to roll on the ground laughing when I would mess up some new rule that I swear they had just added, like having to hug Becky’s dad, my brother-in-law, and then get him to pick you up (believe me, that was awkward for everyone…). 

After I somehow, I really don’t have any clue how, I made it back to the hopscotch court, I was terrified to see that I stepped on a line again, but I could see Becky was getting tired of playing this game, so she let it slide. 

I finished playing, she told me how fun it was, and I said how I had to go inside to help her out with something. I gave her a hug, and hastily retreated inside before I was pulled into another new game.

“How was playing with Becky and Liz?” asked Rebecca, my sister, and Becky’s mom. “You have fun?”

“When did I become so old that I can’t keep track of a children’s game?”

“Oh god, that’s what you’ve been doing? I refuse to play that game anymore after the first time I tried,” she laughed.