ag. We all played it as kids. When we were too old for hopscotch, too young for lacrosse and too sick of dodgeball, tag was the perfect playground game. There were two basic versions of the game. The first was regular "It Tag," where one person was designated to be It. When It tagged somebody, that person became It until they tagged somebody else, and so on. The second variation of the game was "Freeze Tag," where the person who got tagged did not become It, but instead became "frozen," and remained that way until another non-It player ran by and tagged them, thereby un-freezing them. If you were frozen three times, you became It and the process began all over again. Basic rules and a basic objective: avoid getting tagged It.

Choosing the initial It was a game all to itself. Many kids simply shouted "Not It!" then stood on one foot or grabbed their nose, and the last kid to do so became the first It. We always used the "one potato, two potato," technique. Everybody put out two fists while one kid chanted, "One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more." On each beat, the kid chanting tapped his fist around the circle, touching each respective fist with his own. Since, of course the chanter only had one fist left to use, his chin was his second marker. If the chanter’s fist landed on yours on the last beat, you put it behind your back. Once both fists were gone, you were out; not It. The chant was repeated over and over until all but one kid was knocked out. That kid became It, and the game began.

If we had just stuck to this, there would have been no fights. But, too often, cheaters would use the "My mother told me to pick the very best one," schtick which allowed them to add on words and syllables at random, making sure that both they and their friends would not be It. "And you are def-in-ite-a-ly the one... who... is... now... it," and other abuses of the chant always led to arguments and cries of "not faaaiiiir." But more often than not, the fat kid who couldn’t catch anybody, or the kid who nobody liked anyway was doomed to be It.

The basic rules were "Tag: you’re It," – plus the corresponding rules for freeze tag. But no rule was ever basic in Tag. Calling "no tag-backs" was important because it prevented you (as It) from being re-tagged by a particularly quick kid the instant you tagged him. But, if the rule wasn’t called at the beginning of the game, tag-backs were completely legal. Sometimes areas were defined as out-of-bounds, which – depending on the kids you were playing with – you paid attention to, or willfully ignored. Oftentimes there were stalemates because somebody had gone out-of-bounds and the It kid had called him on it; "Lewis is out of bounds. He’s It." Lewis would insist that he was not It. And until somebody gave in, the game could not continue. Sometimes Lewis was wily. He would continue arguing until he was right next to the former It then say, "Okay fine. I’m It." He would then tag the gullible, unsuspecting kid and run. Too bad for that kid, because it hadn’t been established at the beginning of the game whether or not "tag-backs" were allowed.

The one rule that we never forgot about was the one that determined where the tag-free zones were. Most everybody I’ve talked to called this area either "Safe" or "Base." Growing up in rural Maine in the mid-80’s we called it "Gool." To this day, I still don’t know the origin or significance of the word, but in the context of the game it was simply a safe-zone. Something was designated as Gool – the baseball fence, the flagpole, a large patch of dirt in the middle of the grass – and as long as you were touching it, you could not be tagged.

As with anything else in this children’s game, there were even variations on the Gool rule. Sometimes the person who was It was allowed to count people off Gool. It would count to 5 and anybody on Gool had to get off or else they became It. Often the rule was that you had to get off Gool for a certain amount of time or had to go a certain distance away before you could get back on. But, again, if it wasn’t called at the beginning of the game, you could torment It by legally taking your hand off the fence and putting it right back on again.

As always, the rules could and would be changed mid-way through the game – usually to suit the immediate needs of an older or more popular kid. A sixth-grader, realizing that he was about to get tagged would touch some random object and call it Gool. If It was a kid that nobody liked anyway, then It would just have to suck it up or leave the game. It happened more than once that the other players saw the sixth-grader’s stunt and decided to copycat; declaring Gool at will and forcing this poor kid to remain It for the duration of recess. Elementary school kids really are the cruelest people in the world and Tag was and easy outlet for that cruelty.

One final variation on the Gool rule: "TV Tag." There was no established tag-free zone. Instead, kids declared their own Gool by crouching down and shouting the name of a TV show, "Mister Belvedeer!" How anybody ever got tagged in this game is beyond my comprehension. With TV Tag, the world was your Gool. If It was within even a dozen yards of you, all you had to do was drop and yell "Dukes of Hazard!" and you were golden. It really had Its work cut out for Itself.

Tag was the one game where nobody ever won or lost. The only objective was to not get tagged It. But even if you did get tagged, you could just as quickly be back and running for Gool with a well-earned tag of your own. Tag was more about challenging yourself. The more daring kids usually never even went near Gool, while the more timid kids (read: girls), never left the fence. When they got bored, some kids would even allow themselves to get tagged, then go chase down the fastest kid in school. These were probably the kids who took up extreme sports or extreme drugs as teenagers. It didn’t matter how many chances you took. There were no points and you couldn’t be knocked out. The game only ended because the bell rang.

That’s probably the reason why we don’t play Tag as adults. We need such structure in our recreation. Every other game has a definite ending. You play to a certain score or until the clock runs out, and when you’re done, there is a winner and a loser – a justification for playing. If we were to play Tag, how would we know when to stop? Somebody would just have to admit that they were sick of playing. And that’s not a good way to end a game. On the playground, you played hard until the end of recess and then pushed it all out of your mind until the next game. It was pure. It was simple. And anybody could play – provided you could remember the complex and ever-changing rules.

Thanks to Andy Herger of Wisconsin who finally ended the mystery of the origin of the word "Gool" for me.

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19990217