Suicide (A Game)
My favorite made-up childhood sport
written by Mike originally for Poprocks & Coke on February 23, 2002

Let's pretend for a second that I'm a world famous psychologist.

"Hey, look! Over there! Why, it's that world famous psychologist, Doctor Fireball!" "Inconceivable!"

That's right, boys & girls! Today I am going to tell you about my theory that every child develops a favorite game that he or she enjoys playing with his or her group of friends at a fairly young age!

OK, pretend time is over. Wasn't that fun?

Today, I don't have any HEY REMEMBER THIS GUYS memories for you. Instead, I'm going to share one of my own. Think about it. When you were just a wee lad, you & your friends had that one game that you liked playing best of all. For my group of friends, we had several, & it would be pretty hard to put the top 5 in a true order. But I think it's safe to say that the #1 spot would have to go to a game called Suicide.

One would expect that a game with a name like Suicide would have something to do with chancing death, or at least writing bad poetry about the last time you were left alone with razor blades. But actually, Suicide had little to nothing to do with the act of killing yourself.

On the surface, the game was simple & required little equipment. First, a brick wall. This was the essential part of the playing field. Wherever we found a brick wall, we found a new place to play. The usual playing field was on the side of my friend Eric's great-grandmother's house, which was 2 doors down from my house. Most of the house was brick, so it did its job. Even if the lawn was on a slight incline. Sometimes we played on the side of the house next door. It wasn't a brick house, but it had the largest chimney ever, so it worked well. We would also play off the outside of the home team's dugout down at the baseball field. The only problem was that there was a creek behind that little playing area, & the ball would roll right down into it if we weren't quick enough to stop it.

The second essential piece of equipment for a game of Suicide is a ball. We usually used tennis balls, since they were pretty easy to find. Most kids had a decent supply of tennis balls in the corner of the garage. But what worked even better were those blue, rubber raquetballs. They had more bounce to them & made a funky "pop" sound when they hit the wall, making for an overall more intense game.

So here's the basics of the game. Throw the ball against the wall, catch it when it bounces back to you, rinse & repeat. Should you fumble & drop the ball in attempt to catch it, you have to run up & tag the wall before someone else grabbed the ball & threw it at the wall. If that kid's throw beats you to the wall, you're out. It was predetermined how many outs a player could get before they were eliminated from gameplay. 3 was the standard number.

Right about now you might be thinking, "No no no, Mike! That game was called ________!!!" Well that's great & all, but to be frank, I don't care. Now to be Mike again, we called it Suicide, & that's what I shall continue to call it when I teach my children this game. And that's what they shall call it when they teach their children this game. Besides, as a Philadelphia suburbanite, we have a lot of stupid names for things. For instance, see those colored things on top of the ice cream cone? They're called jimmies. No, shut up, I don't care what you call them. They're frigging jimmies. That's what I've been calling them all my life, & I'm not going to stop now that you tell me you called them something else.

Now, that up there, where I described the basics of the game... yeah, remember that? Well, that was just the basics. The thing about Suicide is, my friends & I played it so often, that we started having tournaments & creating our own custom rules. We practically turned Suicide into an Olympic sport.

The thing with the rules is that we would turn them on & off at the beginning or in the middle of the game. Like if it was getting boring & we weren't really getting many people out, we'd call a rule to make things a little trickier.

The Rule
This was the first of many new rules we made up, but we always continued to call it The Rule. Emphasis on the The. This one was kind of complicated. Ok, ready? Someone tosses the ball at the wall, then if someone ELSE catches it before it hits the ground, everybody else has to run up & tag the wall. Now the guy who caught the ball couldn't throw the ball & get everybody out. He had to run up with the ball & tag it while it was still in his hand. Anybody he beat to the wall was out.

The Rookie Rule
When the Rookie Rule was on, you were only allowed to catch the ball with one hand. I have no idea where the name of the rule came from. Maybe because it got rid of new kids quickly.

Double Touch
This rule was always on. If you dropped the ball & then touched it again by accident, you got an out. Even if you kicked it or something. Out.

Touch of Self
Heh, perverted moments in outdoor games. Eric made up that rule off the top of his head. Then we all laughed at him. But we kept calling it that because it's funny. Touch of Self meant that you weren't allowed to catch your own throw. Like right after you threw it, someone else had to catch it. If you did, you had to drop it & run.

Touch of Back
We might call this rule to speed the game up a tiny bit. This basically meant that if the ball rolled all the way across the street behind us & touched the curb before anyone got to it, the closest person to it got an out. If we were playing indoors, it applied to the back wall, & if we were playing by the baseball field, it applied to the creek.

Touch of White
This rule applied to when we were playing on the side of someone's house. If your throw hit the siding as opposed to the brick, you had to run up. We called it Touch of White because we made it up while we were playing on the side of Eric's grandma's house, because the siding above the brick is white. Wait, hang on... here's a picture of it.

See? And the house in front of it with the chimney is my next door neighbors' house. I took the picture in front of my house. You'll notice there's a little bush in front of the wall of the far house. If the ball hit the bush, you had to run up. Rules changed, depending on the field. I think baseball should be like that.

Ceiling Rule
If we were playing indoors & your throw hit the ceiling, you got an out. If the ball hit a side wall before it hit the main wall, you got an out, unless the ball didn't bounce between the side wall & the main wall. Then I think you were ok.

Relay
First off, there was an understood rule was that if the ball bounced before it hit the wall, the person who threw it had to run up. But if you were kind of far & you knew you couldn't reach the wall without making it bounce, you could call for a Relay & throw it to somebody else. They had to catch it though! If they dropped it, you both had to run up. Also, if you threw the ball & somebody caught it before it hit the wall & you didn't call for a Relay, he could run up with the ball like with The Rule & tag you out.

Peg the Person
We called this rule when we were in an extra-aggressive mood & felt like hitting each other with the ball. When Peg the Person was on, instead of getting someone out by throwing the ball at the wall, you had to throw the ball at the person you're trying to get out. Also, keep in mind that it's harder to hit a kid running around than it is to hit a wall that isn't running around, so it made it a little more difficult to get people out.

Rough Touch
Rough Touch basically meant we were allowed to push each other around, especially if somebody had to run up. We could just push you out of the way so it'd take you longer to reach the wall.

Spread Eagle
No, shut up. This meant that... ok, let's say we were playing a 3 out game. After you got 3 outs, instead of being eliminated from the game, you had to go stand up against the wall & give everybody one chance to peg you with the ball. Luckily, some kids had bad aim. The last time we ever used this rule was when someone accidentally nailed my brother in the mouth. My mom made him wear a mouthpiece for a while after that. Oh yeah & one time I pegged a kid in the junk. It wasn't pretty. And I don't think he'll be able to have any kids.

There were probably a couple more rules we had that I forgot, but like I said, I forgot. So on with my story.

Tournament games
The first tournament game we held determined the first holder of the title of Suicide Champion. It was a 6 out game held in the empty cafeteria of our grade school one day in July. I forget who won, but it wasn't me. I think I got out from a Double Touch.

Anyway, after that, if someone wanted to challenge the Champion, he'd go head to head in a 1 out game between just the two of them, with the Rookie Rule on. Or sometimes, the Champ would call for another Tournament game. They'd normally be 3 outs & whoever won was the new Champ. The current Champ would call any rules he wanted on & off at any point during gameplay, even if he had gotten out.

I was Champion a few times, but never for too long of a stretch. But when we held Nintendo tournaments, I was the undisputed king. But, yeah, I'm done talking about Suicide. I just wanted to tell you guys about a game I liked to play a lot when I was younger. There will be more where this came from. But not now... later.