Smear the queer

Man, I'm sure people play it, maybe with a less offensive name. I definitely heard it called that while growing up, but I never heard that name anywhere other than the rural-ass area I'm from.

aka Kill the Pill

yeah, i was really wondering if they still called it that.
i remember as a kid not even realizing that it was offensive

of course i played this. what a weird game. the point was 1) to tackle and/or crush whoever had the ball and 2) to get the ball. errrr.

I'm not googling this at work, but what's the game?

there really is no winner in this game. you just end up with a lot of grass stains

this game called love

Why anyone would willingly pick up the ball remains a mystery.

xxxpost
it's played with a football.
you throw it in the air and whomever catches it has to try and avoid getting tackled by all the other players.
when the ball handler gets taken down it starts over again

the point of getting the ball is to show what a hardass you are - duh

everyone has me killfiled don't they

For some reason we most often played this game in or around water, probably to lessen the impacts of tackles and/or to be able to use attempted drownings to get the ball.

I played a variant called Fouling Football, which was soccer played whenever there was more than a couple of inches of snow on the ground, and without any of the rules, the logic being that this would be less painful. It was awesome. I loved that game.

my reign as the queer was usually short lived. I run too slow :(

TS: Smear the Queer vs. Pickle in the Middle (or Keep-Away for the uncreative mind)

Ha, I thought Smear the Queer was just cutesy rhyming terminology for gay-bashing.

Is Pickle in the Middle the same as Monkey in the Middle?

kids at my school were still playing this in the mid-'90s

HEY BATCHES,

BUTT'S UP

that didn't sound right

we're talking about the tennis ball game here

"Smear The Queer" was def. the accepted name used for it in non-rural St Paul MN circa 1980.

Sometimes "Tackle The Bum" if an authority figure was within earshot.

classism: ok with authority figures

We played "Fag Tag" in which the person who was "it" would try to tag other players by kissing them.

tenis balls are for pussies; use a softball

Link

We played "Fag Tag" in which the person who was "it" would try to tag other players by kissing them.

-- sexyDancer, Wednesday, August 1, 2007 12:20 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

I remember around 1988 we played AIDS TAG where more and more people would get it.

clasique gamr

I also knew kids in St Paul who would nonchalantly refer to a large stick as a "n****r beater", and I'm proud to say those were kids I rid myself of once middle school came along.

I've also heard "n****r-be-good stick"

Friends of mine referred to them as "honky whackers".

And we're almost all whiteboys.

ahhh "Fag Tag"... couldn't remember that for the life of me.

We didn't play this at my backwoods school (rural kids can be sheltered as well as backwards; I don't think I had any conception of "queer" until after my ballgame-playing days were over), but I had a friend who went to an ultra-new-age-hippie school in Berkeley where they did. Until, of course, one of the teachers caught on and explained why the name hurt her feelings. I can't remember what they changed the name to.

me and my friends called them all-gods-children-regardless-of-hue-hitters

...but don't remember trying to kiss anybody (?)(wow)

It was just another name for "Smear the queer"

xxpost

RUNNING BASES

butts up is a totally different game

i remember around age 6 or so (this would've been around 1988) playing a tag game with the other neighborhood kids where the person tagged got their pants pulled down. once i got tagged i, being kind of a little weiner, decided i didn't want to play anymore and started to run but not before the other kids held me down and forced down my shorts. i broke free and started to dash toward my house a few doors down, but then a dog from one of the front lawns i ran past started chasing after me and i screamed all the way home in terror.

i want my childhood back. or at least a cookie.

my Vietnam, man

classic story there! have you recovered from that?

yes

these games sound great, if only for the names.

We used to play Bomb Scare when we were very small. This involved running up to people and shouting BOMB SCARE at them. Great days, Gay, great days.

butts up is so fun

no mention of british bulldogs or kick the can yet?

Or Knicky Knocky Nine Doors?

i got my arm broken during a game of smear the queer (we also called it tag the fag). fuck that shit.

smear the queer was an initiation rite i never passed. butts up was fun, but i still didn't pass. i played a mean-ass game of four-square though. and chinese jump rope.

actually smear the queer wasn't allowed at recess, like the v. large lady hall monitors would break up a game if they saw it, so i guess they happened in backyards and lofts.

There was a short-lived game invented at my grade-school during "social time" (which was like recess but it wasn't on the playground, we were a little "too old" for playgrounds, it was in a parking lot) called Blitzkrieg. It was all the sixth grade guys just running around, clotheslining each other. Smear the queer made me nervous.
We also played Steal the Bacon.

Is that like Smell My Cheese?

did no one else play this game?

at my pretty PC-before-they-called-it-that elementary school in the mid-seventies, we played this game, but the only name we knew it by, hand to God, was "Kill The Man With the Ball." When I got to junior high and heard about the other name it just lacked the savage self-explanatory character of our version.

kill the man with the ball is the most obvious name, rules spelled out it in it. love it.

yeah to this day it gives me the giggles, it's like the most violent lesson in pure language functionality

That's exquisite!

KILL THE MAN WITH THE BALL.

Kill the Man Who Questions the Ball

i have no idea what any of these games are!
maybe canadians save all the brutality for winter sports. oh except for dodgeball, always dodgeball... red rover could get pretty cruel too. i would play Kill the Man with the Ball if only for its beautiful truth.

Smear the Queer: Football for real men boys.

red rover!

We sometimes played the game as "maul ball" which impresses me now because it implies some 2nd grader actually knew the word "maul"

we just called it 'fumble', the only variation being that we eliminated the running part (a necessity born out of having small yards) and yelling "FUMBLE!" with glee at the ball-haver.

we tried playing polo with bicycles and hockey sticks but that was short-lived.

fireball hockey (street hockey with a tennis ball doused in gasoline and set on fire) was not our finest moment.

we also played this game where we laid down immobile, all scattered on the street and one guy would throw a baseball high up in the air. if the baseball doesn't land on you, you win. or rather, you don't lose.

Is Red Rover the same as British Bulldog? I remember them both as being games of groups of people trying to stop other people from going somewhere.

that's how nazi germany...etcetera.

kids today do not play these games, from what i've seen. (camp counselor, lol_)

in the early 90s, we used to just have wars with different gangs made up of cliques of boys. it was all about allegiances-- one day you'd be playing at some kid's house and the next you'd be bashing his head against a rock because he was from a different gang.

Did anyone see that NYTimes article about the near-death of street games in New York?