When my 3-year-younger brother and I would get into tussles and were wrestling around on the floor, whenever one of us would get the other in a painful hold or would otherwise be getting the better of it all, nine times out of ten we would utter the title expression expecting to be let up.
This thread has three purposes:
Did you ever use that exact same expression in similar circumstances?
If not, what was your variation?
What other childhood expressions like this still find their way into your adult lingo? (I mention this because my wife and I will find occasions – usually when watching TV – to say the words. She used it in her childhood, too.)
I think crying “Uncle!” has a similar function. Also “tapping out”, beating the mat to let your opponent know you give up. That would make more sense if you actually couldn’t breathe.
The only parallel figures of speech in my adult vocabulary are “Red - Yellow - Green”
The only remnants of our childhood expressions are the names we called ourselves before we could pronounce our own names, and my brother’s insults/ribbing kind of names for me. Beefnose was one even though my nose is actually too small.
What it makes me think of…I was reading a book last night that referred to a childhood “game” where one kid would scratch another kid on the inside of their wrist 200 times or until the kid said “chicken” and gave up. They could then be referred to as Chicken. This wasn’t one I’ve ever heard of–anyone else?
Oh, yeah, “Can’t breathe” was the safe word, I guess. “No!” “Stop it!” and “I’m gonna TELL!” were just signals to increase the torture.
My daughter hasn’t used it yet, but her brother isn’t nearly as good a terrorist as my older brothers were to me. Of course, there’s 12 years between them, so he’s got to be gentle or he could break her. But generally her “safe word” is “PLEASE!” “No, stop it!” and “Don’t” just get her more tickling, but “please” is the magic word.
My son really did have an official safe word when he was young, because he’d scream all sorts of things and then be sad when I’d stop tickling him.
I’ve heard it as “Chicken Scratch”, but that was after I was an adult. Some kids explained it to me, and I was kinda horrified by it.
My sister had cancer twice, once at 12 and again at 17. For the chemo she had a broviac inserted into her abdomen. During tickle fights with her we’d have to be careful, and if we went to far she’d holler “You’re hurting my broviac!” It had only been really tugged once (which did hurt her), but after that, the ‘broviac’ was what stopped us from continuing to tickle her.
It’s seven years later and we all still say that once in a while.
I think “uncle!” came later in my development. The “can’t breathe” thing was known to be fake and later came to mean other things, most notably when we were laughing too hard. But, that’s where the “tapping out” would apply.
Beefnose makes me remember when I was 9 and Mama was expecting a third child (which wound up being stillborn) and she handed my brother and me a little kid’s book with a title something like “This is a watchbird watching you” and told us to go through it and see if we could come up with a name for the new baby. The drawings were more Dr. Seuss looking than anything and were very stylized. One of them had this person with a huge bat-shaped nose, so obviously we picked Batnose for the baby. I do hope the baby didn’t get wind of that and decide just not to bother.
The “chicken” thing reminds me of how we played Rock-paper-scissors on long trips. Whoever won that “hand” would lick his (or her – yes, girls played, too) index and middle fingers as a group and then slap the wrist of the loser as hard as possible. The first one to bleed lost the “game.”
I should amend that: I’m horrified by little boys almost in their entirety.
I prefer torture the way it’s meant to be played: social ranking and subtle psychological pain which destroys you slowly from within, yet can be denied when adults try to confront the perpetrators about it. Y’know, girl stuff.
I got to see that Can’t Breathe thing with my firends kids. The 5 year old went into his bedroom and the 9 year old closed the door and held it closed from the outside. The little one yelled and pulled for a few seconds and then yelled, “I Can’t Breathe!” This was a real laugh for the other kid. The little one realized just how fake it was and tried other tactics. It was interesting to see the reflexive use of a ploy for release even when it made no sense.
You sound like Louis CK talking about how his nephew put sand in his sister’s drink, but his daughter made him ruin his other daughter’s toy because hers broke (to ‘be fair’). And about how men will cut off your arm and throw it in a river, but women will shit on your heart (debatable).
I’m pretty sure I used ‘I can’t breathe.’ It is funny how that parallels adult ‘safe words’ – how we still distinguish between struggling and fighting back for amusement (meaning we all acknowledge it’s pretend and that we like wrestling and being pushed around a little) and out of real fear and pain.
You didn’t miss out on much. Sure, I got to put a wig and a dress on my little brother and have tickle fights and stuff, but he also stole my candy and put vaseline on all of the doorknobs and let his friends go through my underwear drawer, etc.
Now I remember another one–whoever lost at War had to hold out a fist while the other clocked them on their knuckles with the side of the pack of cards. OW!
Another “that reminds me” comes from a line I can’t quote verbatim because I can’t remember for sure which movie it’s from. A wild guess is that William Holden says something like it in Stalag 17. Anyway, somebody asks him where he got so beat up looking and he says, “We were playing pinochle. It’s a rough game.”
Yeah I used to say “I can’t breathe” all the time when my older brother was crushing me in some wrestling move. His reply was always the same: “If you can say that, then you can still breathe”.
Safe word?! Wish I’d had one of those when my brother pinned my arms and tickled me until I peed. I guess you could call it a “safe bodily function,” but safe word?
I had a little sister so didn’t deal much with the wrestling there. But with the other kids in the neighborhood?
“OK OK YOU WIN YOU WIN GET OFF GET OFF!”
