In sixth grade I painted my face white, made a “bullet wound” in my forehead, slapped on a dress and some ripped nylons, grabbed a fake bouquet and went as a dead bridesmaid. We had an entire wedding party and a few guests. Needless to say, most of my class didn’t make it to the parade that year. Talk about bitter. 
Ditto on the parachute and square dancing. We also had two long bamboo sticks that a person on each end held. They would hit them on the ground twice the click them together while 3 or 4 people would hop between the sticks. Anyone else remember this?
When we did the parachute thing, we’d get a classmate in the middle and toss him or her up in the air. Great fun! Until one little dweeb got his hands caught in the center hole’s cross-twining. He wretched his fingers, and we had to go back to bouncing balls in the middle. 
i did the parachute thing too. and steal the bagel (the jewish version of steal the bacon). and of course, how could i forget kissy tag? i guess it was kind of like freeze tag only to unfreeze a person instead of just tagging them (or crawling under their legs in some variations) you had to kiss them. of course this was in first grade when none of us knew anything, but hey, it won me my first boyfriend. (end reminiscing mode)
Flashback!
We used to play Cartoon Freeze Tag. I have no idea how, but I’ll think about it.
Booker: The medicine ball prez was H. Hoover. I saw it on C-SPAN.
Here, I even found you a link:
I think you can stop talking about the parachutes now.
Given all the people who played with one in school, I doubt it qualifies as “odd” anymore.
granted. but do you know anyone else who played kissy tag?
oh yeah, and MrC, i think cartoon tag was when you had to name a cartoon to unfreeze somebody. i vaguely remember that game too.
(and yes that was a desperate attempt to up my post cout. i will hit 100 some day ssskuggiii!!!)
Not at all, Diane. When was, this, 1940??
::fleeing::
I was in marching band in high school, and my band did seriously weird things that I doubt anyone else ever did. Mostly to make up for the boredom of football games that we were forced to go to.
The most bizarre thing we did was a game called “werewolf.” First, you must know that a lyre is a teeny tiny music stand that one can attach to an instrument so that it is possible to read the music while marching. Flute players don’t use lyres, generally, so I never had one, and had to memorize the music instead. But anyway… People would take their lyres and clip them to others band uniforms. My first three years, we had uniforms with capes, and it was impossible to feel the extra weight a little lyre added, and one wouldn’t notice. Then everyone would start chanting “weeeeeerewolf, weeeeerewolf, weeeeerewolf.” Often, the person who had been werewolfed would chant along, as everyone would hastily check their uniform to see if they had a lyre attatched to them. Sneaking up and attatching a lyre surrepticiously to a uniform was the most difficult part of the game. I am given to understand that werewolfing was invented by percussionists. Figures.
Anyway, everyone else thought this game was as bizarre as you’re thinking right now. The football fans forced to sit by us must have thought we were rejects from the looney bins. We occasionally got letters from indignant parents that we were not upholding the standards of the school.
This may not be up to the standards of the thread, but… When I was in third grade or so, I took two grapefruits, cut faces into them, colored the faces with chocolate extract, and brought them to school. I put lipstick on one of them and cleverly had them “kiss” in class. Sadly, only one of the lovers made it home, because I got hungry at snack time.
I was a troubled youth.
Well, we percussionists have every right. We’re forced to sit in the back of the band room while the teacher talks to you guys about “scales” and “flats”. We have to keep ourselves amused somehow. Last year, the percussion section gave up on trying to pretend we were part of the band, and would walk out at random times if the mood struck us.
We had to do that in the 80s. Fourth and fifth grade.
I am NOT very nimble, so was always getting my ankles pinched. I made up for it in floor hockey, though, by bashing the crap out the other girls’ ankles while “aiming for” the puck.
We had “Disco” in junior high. Seriously.
And I distinctly remember our Phys Ed Student Teacher proudly going through her “lesson plan” on it. She wanted us to know ABOUT the activity instead of just how to do it. So she gave us the spiel about its origins, etc, and then she said (and I quote):
“A lot of people say that Disco is just a fad, but it’s here to stay!”
Then we learned a whole routine to go to some Bee Gees songs.
Your tax dollars at work!
In high school we had a unit on shuffleboard. Dumpy slow uncoordinated brainiacs like me LOVED shit like that.
Right. Like it was better for the trombones directly in front of you. When the percussionists got lost, we got to hear about “flams” and “paradiddles” fercryinoutloud. And get hit in the back of the heads with flying drumsticks when bored drummers started twirling them like batons…
Of course, my first director was a drummer first (and second…and so on), so he probably spent more time amongst the mad clobberers than most.
We had “Tacky Day” at my HS. Everyone wore the most awful clothes they could find and went around squirting each other with nasty perfume in water pistols. We also had what I can only describe as “Iron Chemist” competitions–“Let’s see what unlabeled bottles we can find in the back of the chem lab today, Timmy. <BOOM> Gonna need another Timmy!”
We found a first aid kit back there once. The expiration date on the penicillin was in 1965; we found it in 1990.
We had square dancing, and some sort of “jazz” dancing. Boys and girls. In ninth grade. Traumatic as hell, especially for the guys.
Did anyone else get trampoline in gym? We did for the first couple of years, until we had a couple of accidents… they stopped it after those.
Things that happen in Band can never fully be understood in the realm of normal life. Our percussionists (read: drummers) played this game where they would come up behind their victim, take two drum sticks and spread them about 2 inches apart, then shove the sticks between the victims legs and catch his nads between them and lift him up. Sounds pretty brutal, I know, but if you know any percussionists, you know that they are pretty weird and would do about anything for a dollar…
Also, a group of us seniors and some soph’s and juniors would play a game called Bag Tag. Yes, its as bad as it sounds. We would backhand our victims square in the nads. Now that I think about it, we had a lot activities centered around nads. I should go get counceling now.
We played this game where one person got under the parachute and one person was on top (we were small people, probably 1st or 2nd grade) and the person on top had to fish for the person underneath while the rest of the class make “waves” with the parachute to hide the fish. Of course, as soon as we started growing, we had to stop that game because we’d rip the parachute, as we started playing the lame-ass sharks game. MUCH less fun.
My sister and I played a game played There’s No Ghost in the Graveyard and some game that was similar but involved witches and a rock of some sort. I think SisterRiddles made up the witch game. But it scared the crap out of me, anyway.
Are we including the dumbass high school things, too? Because we had a tradition at my school called Cannonball Run. You’re typical drag race, a bunch of cars start at point A and need to make a loop using the interstate one way and residential roads the other at TOP speed. Dangerous as all shit. I, being a drama geek, never participated, of course.
We, too, did the dancing between two sticks thing. I think they pretended it was African in origin. Or something like that.
No, my favorite was the juggling unit in high school gym class. But before you get to juggle. We spent 3 or four days balancing feathers (the big, fake, peacock feathers).
And our variaton of Mat Ball is very, very different - but we had one (as did most schools around us). Think Kick ball, with wrestling mats for bases, as many people as you want on a base, hitting the ball instead of kicking, and having to run the bases 1-2-3-1-2-3-home. And whatever random other rules the gym teachers or whoever else demanded.