You probably remember primary school as the time of your life. The pinnacle of freedom. No responsibilities, mum made your food for you, all you had to worry about was your mates and whether you wanted to ride the Demon at Australia’s Wonderland yet or not.
No. Your mind has blocked out a big black spot in your primary school years. A dark element to all that carefree fun. I’m talking about the sick, fucked up games we played that honestly, should have been the end of our short lives. How we got outta there with little more than some whopper bruises and maybe a broken bone or two is beyond me.
Here’s my ranking of primary games based on how likely we were to die when we played them, from least likely to most.
LIGHT AS A FEATHER, STIFF AS A BOARD
What the fucking fuckery were we playing at with this shit. ‘Oooh, let’s channel the devil and try and levitate some poor soul’?
Are you fucking kidding me? If someone asked me if I wanted to partake in some healthy demonic activity now I’d say no thank you please put at least 10km between your person and myself forever bye.
DEATH CHANCE: Only if you catch a demon.
WHAT’S THE TIME, MR WOLF
Hey, if you ever want to give yourself a complete heart attack, revisit this cooked as shit game. One person was in and stood at the end of, say, a 25m playing area. They are now a murder demon and will absolutely fuck you up. They’re also known as “Mr Wolf”.
Everyone else has to stand in a line and chant “what’s the time, Mr Wolf”, the murder demon/mr wolf says a time (say, 3pm) and they march 3 spaces, or something. Look I’m trying to remember but also it was 4000 years since primary school. Anyway, whatever the rules were – at ANY POINT Mr Wolf could just fucking go “IT’S DINNER TIME” which meant he/she could BOLT AFTER YOU ALL and tip one person, who would then be the next Mr Wolf. You have not experienced true terror until you’ve seen your mate whip around with hell in their eyes and start galloping toward you.
CHANCE OF DEATH: maybe a heart attack.
RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT
Similar to Mr Wolf and another game which will give you the heart attack of y0ur life, in this one the person who might die from shock is the one who is “in”. Why? Well, the whole point of this game is to sneak up on whoever is in and “tip” them – when the “in” person says “green light”, everyone can walk as fast as poss toward them. If they say “red light” everyone has to stop, and they turn around quick-smart to catch people moving. This also means the “in” person is often MURDERED BY SHOCK when they see how close people have gotten in record time. Fuck me, this game was torture.
CHANCE OF DEATH: see above.
STICK IN THE MUD
Seemingly innocent, this game involved having to “freeze” if tipped, with your legs spread so someone else who was still free could free you as well by crawling through your legs. Seems OK, right?
Wrong. The speed of the game was so intense that people were literally running AT people’s leg gaps and hurling through them. You had a high chance of being crushed by a falling kid, or ripping a muscle when your legs split too far.
CHANCE OF DEATH: Just a casual snapped tendon or some shit.
ELASTICS
Hey! Hey! What’s a great game to encourage kids to play when they have literally no eye-foot coordination?
COMPLICATED JUMPING ON AND ACROSS STRETCHY ELASTICS, that’s what! If you didn’t know of a kid who ate gravel while playing “England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales” then you didn’t have any friends sorry bye.
CHANCE OF DEATH: definitely a broken ankle.
PIGEON BALL/PEGS
Okay apparently only I played this game – so no one else lined up against a brick wall with their friends, and one or more friends had tennis balls and tried to PELT their wall-lined mates with them? Like the most vicious kind of dodgeball but you can’t even escape.
And you came away with giant blue-purple bruises on your thighs and chest? No? Was I going to school with pure psychopaths?
CHANCE OF DEATH: Huge chance of being smacked hard in the noggin, let’s just say.
TENNIS BALL SOCCER
Was this a “just me” thing too? I don’t care, I’m including it because in Year 6, I knew a boy who broke his arm playing this game, which was basically some bogus mix of soccer rules and pushing each other around for no reason, and the soccer ball was a tiny, hard tennis ball which made for ample opportunities to trip and sprain ankles.
CHANCE OF DEATH: mate if you don’t end up in hospital from a broken something after this game, you’re lucky you chump.
CONTINUOUS CRICKET
A sort of bastardised version of real cricket, this was almost always played on bitumen, like the handball courts, and involved a bin at either end of a fake cricket pitch, and a lot of running with bats. See where I’m going here? Yep, stacking it and ripping skin off your knees, getting thwacked in the leg/arm/head with a rogue cricket bat – or ball, depending on how good your players were. NOPE.
CHANCE OF DEATH: There’s a lot going on here, so maybe a concussion or some bone protrusion?
BULLRUSH
Here’s a novel concept – have one person try and tag other children while they all hurl themselves at ultimate speed across a field. The person most likely to die was whoever happened to be “in” – the risk of being trampled to death was high.
But hey! If you were just trying to reach the other side without being tipped, you also had ample opportunities for broken bones – tripping in ditches, running headlong into some other child… the possibilities were endless.
CHANCE OF DEATH: It’s called bullrush. You’re almost guaranteed to get trampled one day.
DEATH DROPS
Some of you will remember these with awe/terror, some of you will have no shitting idea what I’m going on about. But basically, for reference – you swung upside down on some sort of gym bar (not the monkey bars unless you wanted to lose a foot). You then flipped yourself when you were at peak speed, so you flipped over and landed on the ground, ideally on your feet.
Here’s a terrible video showing you what I mean.
I knew a girl who winded AND concussed herself trying this bullshit. I, myself was a master and probably should have trained for the Olympics. A missed opportunity which has sadly led me here, writing about what could have been.
CHANCE OF DEATH: They’re literally called DEATH drops. You flip onto a hard surface. If you’re reading this and not dead you were touched by an angel.
