There are some childhood games that were just badly disguised vehicles for exclusion
Like shadow tag, where if your shadow gets tagged by It, you’re It.
What the fuck. It’s basically a way for everyone to nominate an It (who - by kid-dom law - is usually the smelly unpopular one who no one wants to stand next to but can’t say anything about because one day the teachers got that kid to “go to the office” for a “special errand” then told the rest of the year level to be nice to that kid cos they’re “just like each and every one of you” except they’re “special”) and then they all stand in the shade and not move or anything while the special smelly kid becomes deep-fried in the sun.
Then the kid starts complaining so you make up this rule that you can only stay completely in the shade for 5 seconds at a time before you have to expose some of your shadow, so then you see half a dozen kids sticking a finger out into the sun every now and then and the smelly kid is never fast enough to go stomp on the finger shadow. So they’re just huffing back and forth chasing the shadow made by when the other kids move their fingers.
You know what chases after finger shadows? Cats. Shadow tag reduces the unpopular smelly kid who is just like us but special to that dumb fat cat that all the kids end up chasing with a stick anyway.
Next issue, we’ll discuss Marco Polo on the oval.
