Some common carnival games and rides are easy to translate between the two sides of the Atlantic. Dodgems and bumper cars, they’re the same thing; no matter what you call them, the point is to smash rollickingly into the vehicles of your friends at a summer ball, all dressed in black tie as you act like children for a night.
But those less elaborate games, played by children who don’t have tangible aids at their disposal – no Monopoly or Scrabble board, no bicycle or badminton racket – are a bit more difficult to decipher. And the difficulty is in no small part due to the inability of many like me who grew up playing a certain game to spell its opening phrase correctly, never mind explain it to befuddled British friends.
What, you might ask, is this particular piece of play? I’ll tell you, but you’ll have to read carefully. Here it goes: Quackdiddlyoso quack quack quack. Read it again – I can’t tell you the rhythm, but it’s pretty odd even without being set to a tune.
While sitting in a circle, one palm stretched outward and facing up beneath your left neighbor’s hand and the other flipped over to face down on the right, you begin to clap around the circle while chanting the lyrics. The version I grew up with, popular around New England and New York, went like this in full: “Quackdiddlyoso quack quack quack, señorita, shimmy shimmy shack, falora, falora, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten!” And if you were the recipient of a clap on the hand when the number ten was shouted out, you were out of the game. If you pulled away in time, the clapper was out.
It was a simple and easy to organize, a lifesaver for summer camp counsellors on rainy days. It never once occurred to me to look up the proper phonetics until a few days ago, when I made a joke about the game. I was asked to spell it, and of course I struggled; listening to the words, which are often changeable within one sitting, it sounds like gibberish.
So I consulted Wikipedia, and searches led me to the page for a game called Stella Ela Ola – apparently, the most popular phrasing for a game that’s mutated into assorted versions played over the years throughout Canada and the upper United States. Never before had I realized there were so many variations.
Of course, my friends here in Oxford immediately began to dredge up many similar games from their own childhoods. Though the lyrics differ and the clapping patterns diverge, this sort of pastime is universal. Even at nineteen we can still laugh at them.
Just don’t ask me to spell quackdiddlyoso.
