Whenever my 7-year-old plays tag, she runs to the nearest tree (or wahtever) and yells “I’m on glue!”
I remember as a child, whenever we were playing tag, our safe spot was called “ghoul.” Yes, I know that makes no sense, and I knew it then as well, I have no idea where it came from other than it must be a bastardization of goal, but it was always ghoul and that’s what we called it.
OK, so when you play (or played) tag, what’s your safe area? Is it goal? Free? Glue? Ollie ollie Oxen free?
“Looks like I picked the wrong day of the week to stop sniffin’ glue!” - Lloyd Bridges in the film Airplane
(Your subject line made think of that quote)
To answer the OP, we always called "HOME!"
Q
We played street tag. Tag where only the strong survived. There was no safe area.
I thought it was just us - we were always safe on “ghoul”
Weird - As an adult, I figured it was a form of “goal”, but I have no actual or anecdotal evidence for that…
If there was a “safe area” (and there wasn’t always) it was “Base” or “Home”.
It was “base” for us.
Now I’m wondering which is better, to be on glue or to be on 'base.
Just keep her away from the spraypaint.
Definitely “base” for us.
We also called out “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free”
We called it “ghoul” also, but, like Sateryn76, I thought it was some bastardization of “goal”.
“Poll” Our game of Polly Polly Poll Monster was a complicated battle of stealth and cunning, half tag and half baseball the object was to get from one poll to the other and then back to the start, one of the polls was a junglegym, one was the remains of a tether ball court and the last one was someones backpack each referred to as ‘poll’.
We called it “Home” here as well.
Who knew even simple children’s games would be so different from one place to the next?
If you call it glue I am sure you will stick with it.
Chicago area and was born in '73.
We called it “Ghoul”. I have no idea why (aside fomr the ‘goal’ guess).
“Base” (Philadelphia area, born 1986).
It was always ‘on Base’.
My first thought was that her daughter was sniffing glue and I was going to post “NO NO NO don’t let her do that stuff!”.
I’ve obviously spent too much time around homeless people.
Yeah, my next step is to get her to sing “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” right?
Unfortunately, the only song she likes is “There She Goes.”
It was base for us. But, I remember having a wierd “who’s on first?” moment when playing tag with my parents’ friends’ kids.
It was something like:
Parents’ Friends’ kid: Ok, the tree is ghoul
me: what’s ghoul
pfk: the tree.
me: the tree is what?
pfk: it’s ghoul!
me: what’s ghoul!?
pfk: the tree! the tree is ghoul!
Of course it took a little while for the other kid to understand that I was asking what the definition of ghoul was not what was designated as ghoul for that round. Ahh good times.
Our safe zone was called ‘gool’. (early 60’s, midwest)
the full name was home base, it could be shortened to home or base.
played tag games in ma, pa, ne, and nc.