I chaperoned a marching band trip a few years back, and two of the staff on my bus - drumline guys - played some sort of hand/sound game with each other almost the entire trip that I couldn't (and still can't) for the life of me figure out. They would face each other and hold out both hands as if they were playing two simultaneous games of rock-paper-scissors, and then would make take turns making different but specific nonsense sounds while opening and closing their hands at the same time. The object of the game seemed to be to play until someone 'messed up,' but how exactly someone messed up is beyond me (more on that later). I'll try to explain how it's played, but be warned, I'm going to sound insane:
The sounds (spelled as they sounded) consisted of:
- Byar
- Kwah
- Zhut-tu-tu-tu (sort of a door-closing sound)
- maybe one or two others?
The sounds/words sometimes repeated and sometimes didn't; there seemed to be no pattern, and no sound came at any specific time or after another specific word as far as I could tell.
The hand gestures were even more confusing, partially because they were so simple:
- Sometimes one hand would open, sometimes both hands would open
- Sometimes one hand would close, sometimes both hands would close
- Whoever's turn it WASN'T seemed to be responding to the other player's hand open/close state (judging by their visual reactions), but not in any specific way; by that, I mean there didn't seem to be a specific 'match' or 'counter' to the other person's hands. For example, if one person opened their left hand but kept their right hand closed, the other person's hands didn't do the same thing in reaction/response every time.
As near as I could figure from watching them (even taking notes) the whole time, there seemed to be no correlation between the sounds and hands, let alone with each other. The game was utterly patternless, or if there was a pattern, it was completely obscure. The nearest thing I can think of in terms of 'obtuseness to outsiders' would be the old 'I Have The Hat' game.
They refused to explain the game to me, usually answering any question about it with 'It's not as complicated as it seems.' They did give me a real answer for ONE question, though; when I asked them if the sounds were completely for show and the actual game was just about the hands, they said that the sounds were definitely part of it. Other than that, they were pretty tight-lipped about the mechanics of the game. Whenever there was a disagreement between them whether someone had messed up or not, they never got more specific discussing it beyond talking in intentionally vague terms like "You did the thing, so I won that round" or "I lost because of the other thing." I theorized that they might've been making the entire thing up as they went along for attention or out of boredom, but they literally played it at just about every spare moment the whole weekend, even when there weren't other people around; if it was just pageantry, they were certainly dedicated.
Has anyone else played or encountered this game, and if so, can they please explain it to me? It's been scratching at the back of my mind ever since that weekend.
Submitted February 20, 2019 at 10:45AM by SaigonTimeMD https://ift.tt/2EjS9sk