The Mitten Game

Most of my family was from the city, the SouthSide in particular. SouthSiders are what I like to call scrappy. They are highly creative people, sometimes motivated by payday being next week, and sometimes motivated by beer. Fueled by SouthSide ingenuity and a desire to impress the neighbors, everything that they touch becomes bigger, better and louder.

Sometimes SouthSiders don't understand people who don't think like them, people from far off places. Like the suburbs. We had cousins who lived in the suburbs and were nothing like us. They were well behaved and nice to each other. And clean. We would come ov to visit and tear apart their house, breaking toys along the way. I think that the cousins looked forward to our visits because they could use our barbarous nature as an excuse to be a little wild themselves.

The cousins shared a nice well behaved game called the Mitten Game with us. To play this game, everyone sat around in a circle and rolled dice. The first person to roll doubles had to put on a hat and mittens and then attempt to open a little newspaper wrapped gift before another person rolls doubles. The next person to roll doubles took the hat and mittens and continued opening the present until either the present was opened completely, or another person rolled doubles and got their chance to unwrap the gift themselves.

The excitement would build as people quickly rolled the dice for their chance to wear the mittens. As more paper came off of the gift, our voices got louder, and people started grabbing hats off of each other...finally, the Dollar Store gift was opened and we all got ready for the next round of play.

Imagine how much more exciting the Mitten Game became after we got ahold of it! The urge to enhance the game was irresistible for a Southsider.

First, we opened the game up to anyone who wanted to play, not just kids. Then, we started wrapping the prizes in duct tape. I believe we also tried hockey gloves instead of mittens at one point. You can see where this is going, can't you? Grandparents ripping the hats off of small children, people being knocked out of their chairs, newspaper flying, screaming and swearing, all this over a plastic backscratcher. Oh, the fun. You haven't lived till you've seen your dad fight your drunk uncle over a set of plastic army men. I don't have any of those old prizes anymore, but I may still have a scar or two.

Sometimes events seem bigger in your memories than they really were. But these are SouthSide memories. Bigger, better and louder. It's a way of life.