Is You It or Is You Ain’t (my baby) Tag Part 2

Of all the childhood games being played, few people would ask “What is tag?” Most know the game even if they don’t call it tag and might instead call it a “chasing game.” What might get overlooked is that the game of tag requires creativity and requires an engaged imagination. This suggests that a real appreciation of tag depends on an aspect of ideasthesia.

The universality of tag suggests a common experience of ideasthesia in different ways. With calling a person “it,” that person is now infected with an imaginary contagion. It is also a burden that you must pass to someone else in order to be relieved of it.

In tag, there is always someone who is “it.” “It” is their status in the game. But there are lots of playground games that require that someone takes on the status of being “it.” This contagion of status is transmitted by touch.  

Very young kids enjoy the game. They tell you to chase them. Without much preamble, a child might cry, “Catch me.” And then they run.

It’s your job to run after them.

Anyone tired and really “not in the mood”, will find themselves forced into play. After all, it’s a little kid. The kid wants to play tag. Refusing to play tag, is some kind of crime somewhere. If you care about kids, you will play.

When you catch them, the game isn’t over though. Since they are very young, they don’t often understand or perceive the transfer of being “it.” There is a shift in child development from this very young age to where kids not only attribute the imaginary infection to the chaser; they also understand there is a transfer of “it-ness” from tagger to the tagged so that a tagged person becomes “it” and it means it is their turn to chase after you. “It” was passed from one person to another.

As popular as tag games are, few kids want to be “it.” It’s more fun to run away and escape. The young child will often tell you to chase them again. They don’t start accepting the “it” status until a bit older.

This is partly because being “it” is hard work. Everybody is running to avoid you after all. And some kids laugh and taunt before speeding away from you. Since few kids actually want to be “it”, variations are often introduced.

There are quite a few tag variations. These games are categorized as “chasing games.” An article found at https://www.gameskidsplay.net/games/chasing_games/index.htm lists 39 different chasing games, but there are also ingame variations and options, like “tag backs.”

What is the Law?

Kids from other neighborhoods are dangerously subversive. Corrupt. Unpredictable. They can play tag using new variations, infecting the small societies of kids with new ideas. If you don’t know how those other kids play tag, you can be caught off guard. For example, you might remember to call “no tag backs” but then a kid might make a call that you didn’t anticipate.

When you call “tag backs”, this means, once someone is tagged, they can just tag you back and make you “it” again. This is always a possibility even if you don’t call “tag backs.” After all that running you have to do, you are going to be tired. Being “it” is exhausting. Intelligent, proactive tag players know to avoid this.

Intelligent, proactive tag players know to call “No tag backs” so that once you tag somebody, you get to rest. They can’t just tag you back. They have to find someone else to tag.

If “jailbreak” is called, this means someone can do something to “untag” everyone who was already tagged out of the game. People can’t just call jailbreak. There has to be rules. “Jailbreak” has to be controlled somehow. You are better off calling “no jailbreak.”

The Base Effect

Another creative aspect of tag is that it involves the transformation of a public space into a tag space and the transformation of an object into a sanctuary or “base”. This recognition of imbued people, places, and things is a shared experience of ideasthesia.

If you’re smart, you call “one base” at the beginning of the game of tag or you could be running forever, never being able to tag anybody. Some unethical kids or socially immature kids will take advantage if “base” isn’t restricted to one place. They might call anyplace “base” to avoid getting tagged. It’s like calling truce or timeout. Be sure to establish that no one can call “truce” or “timeout” just because they are about to get tagged. You can’t do that. So, call the playset or the special tree “base.” And there is only ONE base. That is base.

In some tag variations, “base” is a magical place. You call some special spot “base”. Base can be a bench or a tree or a special wall. It’s magical though because you can’t be tag-infected as long as you are in contact with base. You are immune, safe.

There is a base-variation though.

Some kids have invoked a base variation that may not actually have a name. Due to the social conductivity of tag-infection, the immunity energies of base can also get conducted through touch. So, a kid who has a foot on base could touch another kid who can then reach out and grab a friend, extending base by touch. You can’t tag that kid who’s on base, not as long as the chain of base is unbroken. Since it doesn’t seem to have a name, base conductivity is invoked when a kid or two insists through acting it out. They do this by putting a foot into contact with base and then stretch their hands out to reach for the chased or they persuade others on base to form a line from base. It is almost immediately understood that the properties of base are conveyed to every member of the human chain as long as the connection to base is not broken.

This variation is annoying because it allows the chain of people the ability to protect others. They can also interfere with the tagger. It heightens the drama of the game though. If this base variation is used in freeze tag, this can allow players to unfreeze the frozen with less risk of getting frozen themselves. This can lead to being “it” for longer.

There’s also a Zombie-tag variation where taggers don’t stop being taggers. Instead, when they tag someone, that person joins the “team.” Now, two taggers are infected and can tag others. Two taggers can become four and more until everyone is tagged. Everyone becomes zombies. The “it-infection” spreads instead of passes from tagger to tagged. This is often okay though because this makes the game more fun and less exhausting. Now you have help. With freeze tag, people who are tagged have to stay where they are tagged, basically “frozen.” They must remain frozen until one of the chased unfreezes them by tagging them. Some kids will take the game more seriously by trying to hold the position they were in at the moment they were tagged. Often though this proves too difficult and they will take a more comfortable position until someone comes along to unfreeze them. (Something to consider about freeze tag though is how the freeze-touch only works from tagger to the tagged. Not the other way around.)

Not To Walk On All Fours

As mentioned before, you have to “call it.” Setting rules and blocking the introduction of certain variations to the game, sets the ground rules. “Ground rules” is a very specific term because it builds a foundation. It is metaphysics. It says, this is the game we are playing and this is how we are going to play it. These are the rules. Calling the rules is like casting a spell.

A spell is a speech-act. The way it is being used here, it doesn’t need any special language, like Latin or Greek or Aramaic or any other old language. All it needs is will--or focused attention--and the words. In this case, the spell transforms one space into another space. In the movie Tag, the workplace becomes a playspace for tag, a kind of tagspace. They also transformed a church during a wedding into a tagspace.

This can also be done to a field. Add some lines, and you can transform the field into a football field or a soccer field by saying the words: “That’s out. That’s your goal. This is my goal.” You can transform a sandlot into a baseball field with four objects at the points of an imaginary diamond and the words: “Let’s play.”  

With mobile phones, we have apps that allow us to layer “filters” onto our digital photos. We can clear skin and enlarge our eyes or distort images with funhouse mirror effects. There are many different filters that transform images. This is a digital effect that we create in our mind’s eyes with our imaginations.

So, imagine how we see a tagspace in our mind’s eye. It’s not as powerful as some people’s imaginations. Instead, at least for me, a kind of dual nature exists. Parallel universes manifesting at the same location but in one place. “Base” doesn’t really change shape though. It is still the playset or special tree or wall or fire hydrant (whatever), but it is also “charged” somehow. It has a kind of aura we don’t really see. We kind of feel it. It is imbued with the base-like quality as soon as we say those words: “this is base.” This change in seeing is depicted in the Robin Williams movie Hook there is a scene where the grownup Jack needs to become a child again. You see Jack is actually Peter Pan, but he has forgotten the magic of childhood. One of the powerful aspects of magic though is the ability to use the magic of transformation. If he can reclaim the magic of being a child, he can become The Pan once again.

In the movie, Jack is still adult-like. He doesn’t really get “playing”. It’s not just the irreverence and dismissal of adult decorum. It is also about the magic of imaginative, improvisational play where you see what the others imagine. Being an adult makes Jack blind to what’s going on around him. It’s never more clear about how blind he is than when he is about to eat dinner with the Lost Boys. For a while, he can’t eat what they are eating. He doesn’t drink what they are drinking. And as you can witness in the scene, you enjoy that shift from adult-seeing to child-sight.

It Is Just My Imagination

People use their imaginations in overlooked creative ways. We sometimes believe that we are using our senses, but we are really using our imaginations to approximate the use of our senses. We don’t actually see or feel the socially-attributed kinds of corruption or stigma. Instead, we use our senses in figuratively. Imbued objects can ONLY be socially perceived.

We actively perceive corruption and stigma. We use what we know to “imbue” a person or object with this social information using our creativity. We don’t actually see or feel the social kinds of corruption or stigma; we imagine and create them. This is an aspect of ideasthesia derived from social cognition.

A great example of this use of rules and shared imagination is when watching improvisation comedy like in the television show Whose Line Is It Anyway? This TED talk explains the rules of improvisation though: https://youtu.be/LyxHujdRIpk.

We create when we play tag because creativity can involve improvisation. It is active and intentional and shared, but instead of creating real objects, we create virtual objects, like the suggestion of an infectious agent or an aura of corruption. The agent or aura is formed in our imaginations and then we alter our perception of that person into a person carrying that infectious object.

Setting rules is also involved with creativity. The rules set limits on what can be done and what can’t be done. Rules and limits are helpful when creating, especially during improvisation. Tag is fun. It is only fun though until you get too tired or you are disadvantaged, too slow to catch others. It isn't fun if you are always “it.” This is true of cooties as well.

Like tag, everybody knows the “cooties,” even if they don't call it “cooties.” It seems to be the underlying driver for societal injustice. Kids and adults are afraid of “the cooties.”

During the very real “witch hunts,” individuals in a community are suddenly identified as witches. People become terrified. People can see that she is a witch.

Under apartheid, where “colored people" are forbidden from using certain water fountains and there exists “white only" public spaces, what spaces were allowed use by both “races”? After all, there were sidewalks, stores, public transportation. So, when and why were some spaces allowable for use by both races?

History and personal accounts reveal some answers. Taking turns and privileges allow for one race to take the seat of another race. People knew their place. Some people with non-White status had to give space when walking on sidewalks. Gazes were averted. It doesn't make sense, of course. It is magical thinking.

In high school, there are certain kids who aren't accepted socially often because they are unknowns. They haven't been given a status because they are new or they are given a restricted status because of something they did. They are avoided. They are relegated to certain unpopular places in the cafeteria and no one wants to sit with them. How do some schools or clubs break that cooties spell?

This childlike expression of magic and ideasthesia doesn't fight corruption or evil. Instead, it fuels corruption and evil. These excluded people are seen as carrying "the cooties" or some kind of other infection.

As adults, don't call it "cooties." Give it another name. Call it “stigma.” Call it labeling. Call it dehumanization. It is magic that transforms one thing into a lesser other.

There is good news though.

Magic does offer solutions. Just as there is “black magic”, there is also “white magic.” There are wards, protective spells, counter spells. It requires work to tell the difference, just as it takes work to use one magic over another. Practitioners must learn how to use ideasthesia, speech acts, charisma and gravitas in conscious, intentionally skilled ways. This is science.

However, it doesn’t really matter how much science explains the origins of this magic or the workings of magic or even its rules. As Terry Pratchett explains:

“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”

Anyhow, Tag, you're it.

RESOURCES

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2014/03/14/16/rexfeatures_2060428a.jpg?w968h681

https://www.wikihow.com/Understand-the-DEFCON-Scale

https://www.cheatsheet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/michonne-zombies-walking-dead-2-640x480.jpg FROM https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-walking-dead-michonnes-most-memorable-moments.html/

https://www.screengeek.net/2017/11/26/it-pennywise-the-clown-1990-vs-2017/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2854926/mediaindex?ref_=tt_pv_mi_sm

https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/public-places-recreation-whites-only-are-proclaimed